Progressive Footprints in a Media Snow Storm: Let’s you see where they’ve been.

To understand where people are going you need to see where they’ve been. Lucky for us, Progressives are arrogant in that they have left plenty of footprints in the snow storm of media coverage. So there is a lot for us to study. Now, there is a LOT here. So be ready to spend some time with this one. I’ve made the work easy for you to just sit back and watch.

Progressives are an extremely dangerous group for those of us that embrace traditional values. So let’s study the type of people who are behind Net Neutrality and progressive ideologies. If you don’t know what a progressive is click on this link.
Take your time and listen to each of these, even though some are very long. I’ve watched them all and listened to the words carefully, and my determination is that these people are not masters of the universe, as they think they are, but are of the same mold as your typical car salesman. I’ve sold cars, credit cards, worked as a waiter, which is sales of food, so I know the tactics. These are just polished liars. I’ve met these types before and their words can’t hide their real intentions if you know what to look for. So study these clips for yourself.

Here is Al Franken.

Here are some real people from that represent the Hollywood left. Good people. I know some of them myself. But their idea of reading is not the same as mine, theirs, magazines, mine lots and lots of books. It is hard to listen to them without laughing to myself, because they believe they are right. In reality they’re just repeating what they were told by people like Soros, and are easily seduced by his salesmanship.

This is the war that is going on, progressives against traditionalist, not republicans and democrats.
The problem with this guy in the next clip is that the internet is already free. For the truth on this, click here.

Here is an attack on Bill O’Reilly, in an attempt to discredit Fox News because of its tremendous ratings advantage over other, less controlled networks.

And here is the master liar, Bill Clinton. We know he lied, just like all the people above. But watch him look at the camera and outright lie to you. Now pay attention to all the crap he says before he discusses Monica Lewinsky. Much of his tactics are borrowed from the Delphi Technique.

Here he is again months later. And again, study how he spins it. But still, compare the two videos, one where he said he had no relations, then this one where he finally admits it.

Remember the video above with Ted Kennedy. Remember when he was drunk and wrecked his car into a river where the woman with him died. Here’s his spin speech. See the pattern?

The truth: CLICK HERE

This is what Progressives want to do to the United States. They may not mean to, because many of them are as clueless as the writers guild people. But this is what will happen.

Stay informed and don’t let yourself be scammed and you’ll go a long way to saving your nation.

Rich Hoffman
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

The Greatest Gyro in the World: WE ARE WILMINGTON!

It is a reasonable illusion for an outsider to believe that people came from all over the United States to see Glenn Beck in Wilmington, Ohio. And anyone that wanted to see Glenn had a chance, because he was all over the town.

Click below to see him address the crowd that was standing in 10 degree weather, about -5 with the wind chill. See the Blog spot of this video on The Blaze.com, one of the best news sites on the internet.

That address was after a 2 hour radio show, a book signing, his 5 PM show for Fox, then this little speech just prior to his big 8 pm show. In between all those events he took the time to meet many, many people and hear their stories. He made himself incredibly accessible for a personality of his stature.

The critic might listen to this clip and think that bringing 3 new jobs to a book store, and the prospect of a few more jobs here and there isn’t a big deal. They might also wonder why the crowd wasn’t noisier, because the audio sounds like a small crowd. I can say this much……it was quiet in the crowd because everyone was frozen. It was too painful to clap, and the roughly 1000 or so people in the middle of Main Street stretched from sidewalk to sidewalk and extended all the way back to the theater where Glenn’s tour bus was parked. For people with such criticisms I’ll say one thing to you……what are you doing to help out your fellow man? What are you doing to help the world around you….besides complaining? I have never in my entire life seen a personality like Glenn Beck do anything of this caliber before. Oprah comes to mind as the closest thing. But I know Wilmington, and I have known many people that have lived there for years, and to see the transition that Glenn Beck made on Mainstreet USA in downtown Wilmington, Ohio is nothing short of extraordinary.

But the event was not about Glenn Beck. It was about spirituality.

When I first arrived that morning I realized that something had happened in that town. The event was similar to a fair, where the street was blocked off from outside traffic. At the south end of one city block right next to the hotel, was the stage you saw Glenn speaking from. At the other end was a street vendor. In between those two things was a book store, a church, a comic book store, several craft stores, and the majestic Murphy Theater with the “Broke” tour bus parked in front. And the street was full of some of the most bright eyed and thoughtful people all gathered in one place that I can ever recall experiencing. The only way for me to describe it is that it reminded me of the good feelings you get from people when you attend church.

When people go to church, they are always on their best behavior. They tend to be kind to each other as though the eyes of God will take notice and grant them entry into heaven. So people drop their discriminations and anxious feelings at the door of a church and show a side of themselves they don’t show during the rest of the week. I have noticed that much of that image disappears quickly when church is over and people get back inside their cars.

That day in Wilmington, the cold and the nature of the event sifted through the various personalities of society, and all that were present in that street were easy to identify. If society stopped on that day, and the government stopped issuing social security checks, or stopped building highways or any of the services we’ve all grown used to, it would be those people who would be the leadership that would save society and help it rebuild.

Not that everyone was running around with crosses and praying to Jesus. In fact, the only time I saw such references were in actual churches. But, the people behaved as though they were in church, their manner was not instigated out of fear from the gaze of God because they were generally good people to begin with.

I believe more people made eye contact with me on that day in Wilmington than in months of traveling in heavier crowds. It’s because the concentration of people at that event shared in common a love of life, and a lack of fear from what others may see in them.

I also spoke to more people than I have in quite some time. Normally, I dress in a way that people find unapproachable. I normally wear Gargoyle Sunglasses, with an outback cowboy hat just about anywhere I go in public if I’m not traveling by motorcycle. It’s an old habit. Since I’m a thinker, it keeps people from wanting to interrupt my thoughts with useless chatter. That might sound cruel, but I’m being honest. I don’t enjoy being interrupted when I’m thinking, which is all the time. But, I do enjoy the company of people who are genuinely good of heart, and are functioning not from fear but out of sincerity. With that said, many, many people made sure to speak to me and my wife. They didn’t go out of their way to do it, and weren’t doing it in a fake gesture of hopeful redemption. They did it because they wanted to.

I’ve spent entire days at amusement parks like Kings Island, Ceder Point, Universal Studios, and all the Disney Parks, in close proximity to thousands and thousands of people, and I spoke to more people in Wilmington than at all those playgrounds of summertime pleasure. Ironically, the only place I’ve had such an experience of anywhere I’ve traveled was in Key West.

And that brings this simple banter of letters to the ultimate conclusion. People did not go to Wilmington to see Glenn Beck. Glenn was simply serving as a focal point of positive energy that thousands of people were willing to brave the cold and isolation of that small Ohio town for a chance to experience something authentic.

I could see by the people shopping and carrying bags of crafts and other homemade mementos that many had found that authenticity in stores ran by the good people of Wilmington. Others had found authenticity in the Churches, specifically places like the Sugertree Ministries, and the by now well-known chalk paintings. But my wife and I found authenticity in a little Mediterranean restaurant called simply enough, The Mediterranean Restaurant and Café.

It was a time of day where the sun had dropped below the highest buildings and the air instantly become colder. My wife and I were hungry and frozen solid. I saw a Kentucky Fried Chicken at the north end of town so we headed away from the crowded street packed with people trying to get their books signed by Glenn Beck at the bookstore. We passed the inauspicious Mediterranean place naively when my wife said through chattering teeth, “why don’t we eat here? We can go to KFC anytime.” I looked down the slight hill at the KFC sign seeking familiarity and I realized she was right. We came to Wilmington to have a bit of adventure on that Wednesday afternoon in the cold, and going to KFC would be short changing our experience.

So we stepped into the entrance, which was like a strange world because the first thing we saw was an empty hallway with a door on the immediate left. A sign on the wall said, “Welcome Glenn Beck.” I opened that next door and an enchanted world of warmth embraced us. There was also a huge line that extended all the way down a pathway that led to the kitchen. There was a fire in the center of the room in an open pit fireplace, but the line coaxed me to turn back into the cold and head to KFC. That’s when a few of those people I mentioned before spoke to me. “The line isn’t so bad. We’ve only been in line for about 20 minutes,” said a kind woman in her upper 50s. Then a man about four feet down the line addressed me. “I love the hat! That’s a great look you have there. Hey, the line moves fast. Don’t worry about it.”

My wife and I looked at each other, shrugged our shoulders and decided to stay. We proceeded to head to the back of the line. The place was packed but nobody was angry or in a hurry. The people filling the dining room all had lights on in their eyes. I didn’t feel anxious to stand in a line. I typically hate lines, but in that room, with the whole day ahead of my wife and me, the warmth of the room and the good nature of the people, the wait in that line was actually part of the fun.

From the line we could look out into the large dining room equipped with ceiling fans hanging from the high ceiling. The décor was standard Mediterranean, the colors were earthy and on the light side for the most part.

Finally, after our toes had found their feeling again, the hostess greeted us and took us to a table that would normally seat four. I found it odd that because there was only my wife and I, the hostess didn’t wait for a table equipped for just two, given the length of the line behind us. She seemed unconcerned, and I wasn’t about to argue, because the aroma in the room was enchanting to our already hungry stomachs.

I looked up and hanging on the wall above our heads was a sign that said, “BELIEVE.”

For the next hour my wife and I both ordered gyros, which we’ve had from various places all over the United States. And what the waitress put before us was a creation of some remote artisan, not just a cook in the kitchen. The gyro and fries were truly exquisite and I found myself licking my finger tips just to recover the memory of the taste long after the gyro was gone.

We spent the rest of the day after that meal visiting sites all over town. We saw a lot of wonderful energy at the various events. The day came to a sad end when Glenn Beck came out on that stage like the host of a fine party and thanked everyone for coming. While outsiders of this experience would mistake that Glenn Beck was the focus of the event, all that were there know otherwise. Glenn simply held a party in the town and invited America to come and be a part of it. Once there, each person found something special unique to themselves.

And Glenn Beck knew it all along. That is the genius of a man that thinks outside the box. Like any truly good host, Glenn set the mood, and the rest was done by the people in attendance.

So was it an audacious statement that Glenn made, that Wilmington could be way out ahead of the rest of the nation in spirit, and that it could serve as an example to the nation of what our country should look like? I say no, because I found a unique treasure in the form of food in a quant Mediterranean restaurant on Mainstreet that overlooks the courthouse. The treasures of this world are not along paved roads and easy to reach places. All those treasures have been claimed in their ease by the rest of society, and the corrupt among us guard them like dragons sleeping on piles of gold. New treasure must be found away from the Washington DC’s and New York Cities. They won’t be found in the streets of LA, or in Beijing, China.

New treasures are found in places like Wilmington, Ohio and the thousands of small towns all across this country, otherwise known as the fly-over states. Glenn Beck was right…….again. All of us that went to that frozen sacred place and soaked up the new found treasures of that town can now utter ourselves to deeply comforting sleep each night with the secret knowledge that “We are Wilmington!”

The next time I want a gyro, my wife and I will drive out of our way to go back to The Mediterranean Restaurant and Café in Wilmington, Ohio, and we’ll enjoy our new found treasure and skip the KFC.

Rich Hoffman
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

America’s First Christmas in Wilmington: Thinking outside the box.

On my way to Wilmington to be a part of America’s First Christmas I was listening to Glenn Beck on the radio and he was discussing the word GOSSIP. It comes from when the English would send spies into the colonial meetings prior the revolution. The spies were told to “Go Sit” in the meetings, and over time the word turned into GOSSIP.

You’ve heard the declarations that Glenn Beck is a fear monger, a hack and unintelligent gold standard stooge. And you’ve also heard that all the people that follow him are mindless fools. Comments like this guy, swigglewiggle from today’s Cincinnati Enquire comments section is typical from those types sitting on the opposite side of the country, who desire a collective society. That demographic is represented at Media Matters. They have clearly misunderstood Sir Thomas More’s book UTOPIA and that is what they want in society. They have gone to great trouble creating the impression of what is normal in American Culture.

(swigglewiggle wrote:

sick. This loon makes over 35 mil a year hawking himself and other assorted goodies. Remember one time he was wailing about the minimum wage being raised cents an hour. making over 35 mil wailing about it. Loser!

He looked a little like an overweight David Duke. They must be related.

You are right, he does look like an over weight David Duke and sounds like David Duke also. And the GOP wonders why they are the party of racist. It’s nowonder the GOP convention looked like a KKK rally. And lets not even mention the Teab@ggers
It’s idiot racist like this who Glenn Beck sells gold to. I bet this fool bought the WMD arguement also. Gotta love Palin voters. They are a dumb as she is.)

What eludes these types of people is that all those ideas perpetuated by the stalwarts of chaos, on the extreme left are far off from the reality of the American experience. So it is with great terror that they must sit back and witness Glenn Beck bringing his radio and TV show to Wilmington, Ohio on December 15, 2010.

I missed 8/28 due to the wedding of my sister-in-law. But I would not miss this, particularly since it was happening in my own back yard.

It is tragic that the good souls that bestowed themselves upon Wilmington, not just to see and hear Glenn Beck speak, but to participate in the Christmas spectacle he hoped to focus on that town struggling to recover from the loss of DHL.
To see a town like Wilmington boldly hold its head up proudly and enjoy a Christmas in America is refreshing in a world that has found itself sickened by progressive thought. As you look around at the crowd visiting the town in the 10 degree frozen tundra of Central Ohio as enchanting shops offers hot chocolate and other delicious treats to shoppers hungry for more than food. The crowd at Wilmington is hungry for spiritual essence.

The reason for the mass gathering at events Glenn Beck hosts are because of Beck, he is able to clean up all the litter that progressive thought has distributed into society, and wherever Beck goes now, that litter gets cleaned up. And people love the country they see when the litter is gone.

Wilmington is the essence of small town America. Ohio has many towns like Wilmington, and is one of the reasons I’ve always stayed in Ohio. Towns like Celina which sit on the shores of Grand Lake are what the country is all about. The ideas that founded the country are overwhelmingly evident in these small towns.

Progressives however, have taken over the coasts, particularly New York and Los Angeles. I like LA because of its uniqueness, and the film industry, but the city has a history being untainted with concern and tragedy, even when they happen. The city sits on a fault line and could suffer a major earthquake any day, yet the city ticks on like nothing is wrong. And that is reflective of progressives. The country under their rhetoric has moved on top of a fault line that could end everything we know in an instant.

But in small towns like Wilmington, they are rooted in the foundations of the country. New York, even though it was there from the beginning started corrupt. It was founded by pirates, and some of the first organized elements in the city were of organized crime. Small town cities like Wilmington do not have such backgrounds in corruption, and are some of the freest places on the planet of corrupt nature. People still wave to each other on the street and they still attend church and have spiritual curiosity. This makes them people rooted in self-reliance as opposed to the hand out culture you find in cities, where you need the bus driver or taxi to take you across town, and you may encounter hundreds of people a day without saying hello to a single person. In small towns like Wilmington, you don’t have a choice. Somebody will make eye contact with you, because that’s what they do. They have little to hide and aren’t afraid of you seeing it. This makes their societies collectively much more honest. Crime in such places is rare because the collective society is rooted in hard work and honest with a foundation in faith.

Progressives have created what America considers to be normal behavior, unfortunately. And the reason Glenn Beck is having success is because he is one of the few in the world, that is able to think outside the box and see that progressive behavior is not normal behavior.

On that same radio program Glenn discussed how during 9/11 some people actually went to their computers to turn them off after the planes had smashed into the buildings. The human need to maintain some resemblance of normalcy in a crisis is a powerful desire. And Beck was right. In general, the people that thought enough outside the box to get up and leave the building on 9/11 lived. The ones, who went back to their computer to turn it off, were stuck. And those were the same people that bewildered and trapped, elected to jump out of the building as opposed to being burnt to death. One can only imagine what thought process must go through someone’s mind in a moment like that, but the options were obviously limited. And in the absence of anything resembling normal behavior, people just jumped.

What nobody in the covering media understands about Glenn Beck is that Glenn didn’t come to Wilmington to help Wilmington. Glenn came to Wilmington to let Wilmington help him the way only a small town can.

The small town is void of progressivism, and that is the healing power of the small town. For me, I get my healing, my fountain of youth, from Greenville, Ohio where I compete each year at the Annie Oakley festival in the bullwhip events. When I’m in that small town, the world makes sense. Racism is gone from my mind and everyone else’s. The concept of hand-outs is shameful, and anyone associated with the government is distrusted, fair or not. Because politicians have a reputation of talking with a forked tongue, and small town Ohio does not like that type of person. But that is why the small town can restore faith in even the most faithful, such as Glenn Beck.

Beck has spent the last year under tremendous fire from the “organized” elements of the “progressive” movement. And even though Beck has been valiant in his solitary fight that people are just now waking up to everyone needs to recharge their batteries sometimes.

I am very, very proud that Beck had the ability to think outside the box and come to Wilmington to recharge his batteries. Beck encouraged a town that would otherwise be considered economically depraved, and on the cusp of collapse, to let the spirit of the town restore the faith of a media tycoon like Glenn Beck so that he may continue to do the good work that this nation is in desperate need of.

All Media Matters is able to do with all the money and influence at their disposal, is spread gossip. I saw the truth for myself in the 10 degree temperatures on a blustery Ohio night. The warmth of the people who came to Wilmington was proof of that insidious gossip that emits from those left thinking, crooked tongued utopians stuck inside the box. The rest of us are stepping out of those confining boxes and finding that the world outside is full of possibilities.

Rich Hoffman

http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Utopia

A book I liked quite a bit is Plato’s Republic. Anyone wanting to understand the problems of our current age should read it. Because the political left, and especially the radical left, get many of their elementary ideas from Republic and it’s theory of Utopia later explored more deeply in the Sir Thomas More book of the same title.

To those that think it is a radical idea I propose that communism is making a push to take over the American way of life, and that there is real danger of that movement from within our borders, check out this article. Tear Down the Empire.

Below is the definitions of Utopia from Wikipedia, which expresses the universal themes.

Utopia (pronounced /juːˈtoʊpiə/) is a name for an ideal community or society possessing a perfect socio-politico-legal system.[1] The word was invented by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia, describing a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean. The term has been used to describe both intentional communities that attempted to create an ideal society, and fictional societies portrayed in literature. It has spawned other concepts, most prominently dystopia.
The word comes from the Greek: οὐ, “not”, and τόπος, “place”. The English homophone Eutopia, derived from the Greek εὖ, “good” or “well”, and τόπος, “place”, signifies a double meaning.

Utopia is largely based on Plato’s Republic.[2] It is a perfect version of Republic wherein the beauties of society reign (e.g.: equality and a general pacifist attitude), although its citizens are all ready to fight if need be. The evils of society, e.g.: poverty and misery, are all removed. It has few laws, no lawyers and rarely sends its citizens to war, but hires mercenaries from among its war-prone neighbors (these mercenaries were deliberately sent into dangerous situations in the hope that the more warlike populations of all surrounding countries will be weeded out, leaving peaceful peoples). The society encourages tolerance of all religions. Some readers, including utopian socialists, have chosen to accept this imaginary society as the realistic blueprint for a working nation, while others have postulated that More intended nothing of the sort. Some[who?] maintain the position that More’s Utopia functions only on the level of a satire, a work intended to reveal more about the England of his time than about an idealistic society. This interpretation is bolstered by the title of the book and nation, and its apparent confusion between the Greek for “no place” and “good place”: “utopia” is a compound of the syllable ou-, meaning “no”, and topos, meaning place. But the homophonic prefix eu-, meaning “good,” also resonates in the word, with the implication that the perfectly “good place” is really “no place.”
Another version of this concept is found in the Panchaea island, of the “Sacred History” book of Euhemerus, a writer from the 3rd century BC.

Plato’s Republic will never work. We know that now. It’s been tried in governments since the book was written around 380 BC. I think it’s time we reject the theory all together and instruct the intellectuals that work for us off public money, to put a sock it. Utopia and Republic are both works of fiction and have just as much social value as Star Wars in the scheme of things. To build political movements off such ideas are foolish yet that is what has happened.

Rich Hoffman

http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior

www.overmanwarrior.com

Institutional Failure and the Healing Power of Key West

What follows is a history of institutionalism in the United States and its impact on the minds of the American people. It is long, so be ready to take your time. But if you stick with it, you might find it very rewarding.

So enjoy. Tweet

What do Walt Disney, John D. Rockefeller, Bill Gates, Henry Ford, Richard Branson, and Rachel Ray all have in common; none of those people have a college degree. It has always confounded me as to why and how the myth that an institution can give someone the needed components to be successful became such a universally accepted concept.

There is a lot of history on the subject of the progressive movement and its evolution from 1880 to the modern era, so there is no need to lay it all out in this work. The research is there for anyone that wants it. The important thing is to ask, why do some of the most powerful and successful people in the world push formal schooling aside. After all, if parents really wanted their kids to have a good life, why would they steer them in that direction spending tens of thousands of dollars on education per year when some of the most successful people in our history have either not gone to formal schooling, or had to drop out because the institution got in the way of their personal gumption.

The answer is remarkably foolish and I’m going to spell it out here. First we’ll deal with what the problem with college education is, then we’ll deal with the impact it has had on society.

College, and most of our education in general from grade school and up, is just forms of analytic thinking. This thinking is extremely useful for finding out where you’ve been, and it can tell you where you’re going if you can find a way to incorporate it with creative thinking, I’ll explain that in a minute. The successful people mentioned, and many others, realize that while the world outside the class room is going by, the college professors are insisting to freeze time while their class is being conducted to study processes.

In management, I have watched hundreds of college educated, well intentioned souls wrestle with a complicated problem for days, or weeks, only to have someone who works on the floor solve the problem in a matter of hours, which of course is quite insulting to the person with a degree. They are supposed to be smarter, and better equipped to deal with problems. After all, that’s what society told them would happen if they pursued a degree.

What they ended up with was a job, and a decent paying job relatively speaking. Enough money to make a decent living, buy a decent home, drive a decent car, and take a decent vacation. But deep inside most everyone is some silly little form of rot that knows they sold themselves short. They wonder how such uneducated specimens as the laborer could know how to reason anything out or have any ideas of value.

The best example I’ve ever heard of why the process of higher education, which is the parent to analytic thinking, comes from Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig. In that fine book, Pirsig paints a picture of this analytic process by referencing a train moving down a long track. The track represents the quality of whatever you’re dealing with, whether it is business, or your personal life. At the front of the train is a locomotive of course, and behind it are box cars of cargo. Within each box car is the history of whatever is behind pulled by the train, he calls this Classic Knowledge. In business, it’s the sales records, inventory variances, staffing requirements, engineering development, etc. In your personal life; it’s much the same, mortgage values, asset management, and livelihood issues. Pirsig made the designation that at the front of the train is a thing called Romantic Knowledge. This is important because on the train tracks of life, seldom does the track just run infinitely off into the horizon, but rather there are many decisions that must be made along the way. And someone has to be at the front of the train to see those changes coming and make the decision to take a different course when those situations present themselves. Romantic Knowledge is what we see and how it relates to the track of life we’re on. The Classic approach is to analyze where the train is and where it’s been to figure out where to go. But in life, the train is always in motion so by strictly using the classic approach, the decisions are often not made in time.

I’ll take this explanation one step further. In my experience, people who swear by the classic approach are often the ones less certain of their course of action, because after all, they did not earn their knowledge, but gained it by assessing data collected. So they tend to rule from the back of the train, in the caboose. I know not many trains have a caboose anymore, but I like cabooses, so I’m going to use it here. Most of the meetings I’ve ever been in, at all levels take place in the caboose.

Why, because life is always a game of hot potato, and nobody wants to be holding the potato when the music stops. We all remember that game from grade school, right. You get the point. And the same holds true from even company presidents, and owners, accountants, engineers, sales people, everyone from the top down. It works this way in business and politics. Those people in the back of the train, drinking tea in luxury in the caboose, with their finger to the wind studying the contents of the train, but at the first sign of trouble, they can jump off the back, or perhaps even detach themselves from rest of the train by pulling the release lever if it is discovered that the train is headed over a cliff.

Meanwhile, at the front of the train is the romantic knowledge person, who is at the complete other end of the train. Those are the people that are most invested and the workhorses that drive the company because if they go over a cliff, they’ll be the first ones to fall. You’ll also find your visionary types up there, at the front with all the workhorses, scanning the countryside for pending trouble. They leave the analytic work to those in the back of the train to deal with the necessary hum drum of business compliance and government regulation, but to them, the real work is at the front.

It takes guts to be at the front of the train. You are essentially on a branch all by yourself, because the structure of every company is of course behind you, but they will abandon you at the first sign of trouble. And the romantic knows this, but stays in that position regardless.

Without realizing why I was doing a lot of things in my life, I ran across Pirsig’s book because it was noticed by many that since I ride motorcycles in the harsh cold of winter, and it is well known that I do many long distance trips by motorcycle, and that I was a different kind of thinker, that I would like the book. It had been out for many years after all. There were two things that came at me in discussions regarding my love of motorcycles. That I should watch the TV series by Ewan McGregor and Charlie Borman called Long Way Round, where they rode a motorcycle all the way around the world, and this book by Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

Knowing both items were about long distance motorcycle riding, I wanted to complete a trip to Key West that had been on my mind for a while, so I put them off until I had done that. My decision to make my big trip to Key West came at a time when the company I had been working for had an annual inventory, and was the best time for me to get away for a weeklong trip. And since I had been working in aerospace, there are typically a lot of details that must get covered in an inventory, where just a few weeks prior, we had our annual NADCAP audit, which really slows things down. So a vacation to Key West with my wife on the back of a 1500 cc Suzuki Boulevard was just the right experience.

In sharp contrast to my daily life of rigid rules and very tight production deadlines, life on Duval Street was the polar opposite. Reputedly loose, and known for its gay population, I found it easy to not notice too much of that. Instead, I found the lack of politics on that small island ideal for total relaxation. It was to me the way humans if left to their own devices would create everything, for good and bad. On that island, there wasn’t much discussion of social hierarchy. There wasn’t much desire for status. The goal seemed to be to watch the sunset at Mallory Square, buy drinks from a street vendor, and possibly get naked on the roof top bar of Adam and Eve.

That type of thing is a bit too calm for me, but it did give me insight into the truth of the human condition because as I looked around, I saw a lot of professionals that were there for similar reasons. I’m not a big fan of intoxication, and many of the visitors I saw were, what they shared with me on that visit was a desire to travel to the end of the earth and just get away from the mainland, but still be under the umbrella of the United States, which is a great thing. More on that later.

Anyway, what that has to do with Pirsig, and this whole idea of institutionalism is that I made a point to read that book after my trip there, and was happy to find I had similar thoughts as he did when he made a motorcycle trip with his son across the northern part of the country going from Minnesota to California. I was worried that if I had read the book before I made a big trip of my own, that my own thoughts might have been corrupted somewhat instead of enhanced by a shared experience.

Long trips like that on a motorcycle have a way of putting you in touch with things, and your observations are much keener, because they have to be. There is not protection from the elements. There are no air bags in case of a crash. It’s you, and the road a few inches below your feet rolling by at 70 mph. Rocks, bugs, rain, the rays of the sun, can have devastating effects to your body, and after traveling over 1500 miles one way to get to such a place as Key West on a motorcycle, you find yourself driving down Duval street with your wife in a bathing suit pressed to your back and knowing you traveled a road till it just dropped off into the ocean. And you feel the relief of social convention drop away with each island you travel through down US 1. And when you come to the sign that says “welcome to paradise,” you get the feeling you’ve arrived truly at one of the world’s great places.

For me, and apparently for thousands of others that go to Key West for fishing, snorkeling, or just to visit the drinking establishments on Duval Street, the island is devoid of institutions as much as is possible in organized society. And that is what makes it a paradise.

And it takes stepping away from something sometimes before you can clearly see it, and I had been on a 20 year crusade against institutions without really knowing why, just that I was at the front of the train in every position I had ever held, but I had no explanation as to why some things that came easy for me, were so confusing to others, especially those that insist that analytic data is the only data worth looking at.
I had been to college myself three different times. The first time was right after high school, I did the typical enroll in classes because society says that the best way to get a decent job. I took night classes in economics while I worked full time during the day. But, the professors to me seemed out of touch, and my conclusion was that they taught because they couldn’t practice it in reality. And I really couldn’t see how those classes were going to equate to a good job. I was working at a metal stamping plant at the time, and I identified with the people on the floor more than the people in the front office. On the floor was where the battles were taking place. Out on the shop floor was where people got injured, lost fingers and sometimes worse. The front office was a place I saw little value being done, and the people went home safely every night. That life seemed boring, so why would I want a job up there? So I could make an extra $20,000 a year as a white collar worker?

My wife and I had one car at the time, so I rode a bicycle 8 miles each way to work so she could have the car during the day. And it was a mild excuse for me to bring some adventure to each day with my exposure to the elements. The rides to work by bicycle, and the danger of life on the shop floor was more appealing to me than what the college promised, so I quite after the first year. The late nights staying up and boring classes just didn’t hold much appeal.

I returned to classes a few years later when management at that same company suggested I had the kind of leadership ability they were looking for, and I’d need school to advance. I signed up for the classes, waiting in the lines at the enrolment office at the University of Cincinnati’s Raymond Walters College, and went to the first day of classes. College level English, business math, economics, that kind of stuff. I could not see how this was going to help me, or my family, so after one night, I quit again.
The third time was after several jobs. I had felt the sting of being a floor worker and holding token leadership positions, and having contracts cancelled and job reductions result. I bounced around from several different companies always finding myself in a position of a leader, by default, but not really having job security. I had a couple of kids, and since my wife and I agreed to have her stay home to be available at all times to raise our children, I worked several odd jobs to make supplement income. Some of those odd jobs included grill cooks at McDonalds, and Wendy’s, I did various sales work, I did janitorial work, and I worked as a tree trimmer.

The tree trimming was dangerous work and I liked it most of the time. But it was hard to work all day at a normal punch the time clock type job and have the gumption to climb a tree at the end of the day and remove it piece by piece hanging from a rope. So I lobbied to switch to third shift at my machine rebuilding job at Cincinnati Milacron, which was a pretty good job at the time, and went back to school full time during the day so I could go for a white collar position either at Milacron, or someplace else.
In a couple of weeks of classes, I couldn’t help but see the blank looks on all the students, many were my age, some were coming back to school to get a better job, some were just kids out of high school, doing the college thing because they wanted a good job. But the overall atmosphere was one of decay, and stagnation. The professors had not changed, and why should I expect them to. And I had not changed in the direction needed to complete school. I still had too many questions for the authority in charge, and they could not give me the answers I needed.

Only books could do that, and I read extensively over the years. One powerful quote that came to me from some of Joseph Campbell’s works was that often the reason many stories involve a hero having to leave society in order to find a way to save it is because society is the one in trouble, so they are not equipped to give the hero what he needs. So the answers are often outside the establishment.
So I quite school for the third and last time. And I looked outside society to find answers to some of the problems within it. And that led to many adventures that we will discuss as the chapters progress. But for now, Key West, outside of society in a way, Pirsig’s thoughts on romantic knowledge, which certainly defines my approach and my own long motorcycle trips.

I have had great success in management positions over the years. It has been a routine for me to take over positions from other managers and quickly fix the problems they had been having. What I never did do was look at the fish bones and other charts from the previous managers. I created my own fresh perspective. This of course is not what’s taught. Teamwork and collaboration are the cornerstones of modern business, so says Bill Smith of Motorola and pioneer of its Six Sigma applications in 1986. He died of a heart attack in 1993 at work but not before seeing Motorola receive the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. GE and Honeywell were two of the first to jump on the Six Sigma bandwagon and used it as a way to find savings they should have always seen, but for the fact that they are huge companies that had huge waste, undetected while they strolled the golf courses of America. Nothing against Mr. Smith, hindsight is 20/20, and he was only trying to get his bosses to listen to reason from pioneers such as Genichi Taguchi who helped Japan reclaim itself after World War II. As it’s turned out though, like many things, good intentions pave the way to hell. Of the 58 large companies that took Six Sigma as a method 91% have trailed the S&P 500 since making that decision. The invisible villain to Six Sigma is it stifles creativity, and ingenuity, and prohibits growth. It saves money by cutting logical waste, but puts everyone in the back of the train leaving nobody up front to make decisions. That is why it is an unmitigated failure to American society.

As you read this, look around at your peers in business and politics. Look at the course of life they are on, and see if they aren’t in for a similar fate as Bill Smith. Organizations such as Six Sigma have gone to great strides, unintentionally, to bring about our lack of competitive advantage currently. And they have worked their way into every aspect of society.

And colleges, like all institutions, have swelled in this later half century because they offer the same thing large companies like GE have bought in to with Six Sigma; a savings of money, and ease of effort, to maximize some proportional return on the investment. But what ends up happening, is a loss of future development while you may show slight profit on paper.

That’s why the answers were always along the road less traveled. While I was on my motorcycle trip in Key West I had to look around at the people packed into Sloppy Joes to listen to a half decent band play while drinking profusely. And I had for them a new understanding to explain their behavior. Escape.

Escape from the world and all its childish institutions. For me, it was a long standing answer to the question I had, why is drinking so prominent in our culture. Adults from 1947 to current that routinely drink alcohol hovers around 64%, and my question has always been why? What makes anyone want to consume a beverage that dehydrates your body, and can make you feel terrible the next day? It is a learned behavior and natural byproduct of going against our natures where we all feel is progressing along without our help or input. So the alcohol provides some needed numbness barrier against that sense of impending doom. And this is a steady and predictable reaction to the slow, eroding conditions institutions place upon our society. College age kids are learning this wherever they are going to school. Every campus has this culture as a natural counter to the mundane diatribe of the college professors.

And for working adults that have to either put up with some company line where the heads of companies force a Six Sigma program on their company whether it’s at the front office level, or the manufacturing floor, it impacts everyone within the organization. For every dollar gained from saved waste, there is always the loss of potential income gained through ingenuity. And everyone at some level feels it, even if they can’t articulate it. And those leaders in those companies typically are at the back of the train looking at powerful companies like GE and they see the report that GE saved 12 billion over a 5 year period and added 1 dollar to their market share, and they allow that information to steer their decision to commit to a program that basically goes against American ingenuity, which is something we have as Americans innate, because we all grew up in a free society. So powerless to stop the avalanche, we turn to the drink, or turn to religion, and many times both.

Six Sigma is not an American idea. It is a concept started in Japan, that Mr. Smith put some new names to, and added a few processes to in order to make a claim to invention. And I’m picking on Six Sigma because it is one of many institutions that are in place in modern business that is prohibitive to what America is naturally good at. And it’s so popular now, that it has name recognition even if the company you do work for isn’t using it.

I’ve personally had to sit through hours of classes in my positions studying this concept and feeling sorry for the instructors, and the owners of the companies I’ve worked for because they are just like fish that bit the hook of a fisherman, with a line in the water. In this case, the Japanese, have a book, actually a couple of books, one is called The Art of War, and the other is The Book of Five Rings which explains in great detail what they are doing to us, and both books will be talked about in further chapters. But in post World War II, we had just bombed their small island with nuclear bombs after a very bitter conflict, and we thought they were just going to go away and be our friends? No, they gave us Six Sigma, a slow poison of which they have immunity to.

The reason they are immune to the effects is because they are not like us. We’re all people with two arms, two legs, a head, hands and feet, and I certainly don’t mean they are inferior, or superior, only how they think is different than us. They are very good at group organizing and incorporating the analytic process. They will work around the clock and not ask for much in return. They live in much smaller living space than the average American, and will often stay with their parents even after they marry. They in many ways understand us more than we understand ourselves. And they knew they could out manufacture us, and what they’ve done as an international business strategy, was to get the world to follow them.

But we can’t be like them without fundamentally changing ourselves and they know that. And to properly do their Six Sigma program, you have to think like a person from the East.

Americans do not like to work together though. We’ll go to the grocery and pass two feet from someone, and not make eye contact with another person. We are one of the few places on earth where we grew up in space, and we like our elbow room. We do not feel compelled to acknowledge another person even if they bump into us. And while the world, that has been jealous of the space we have, points its finger and tells us we are wrong, and we should change, it is probably time that we put some sort of definition on what an American is.

An American isn’t a white homosapien, a Native American, an African-American, a Hispanic American, and Asian American or any of those titles. We are a people that love space, liberties around the clock, and we are a very individualistic group. And we’ve wasted a tremendous amount of time being defensive about that from Europe, and Asia where individualism is not near as important to them because it has not been an option in thousands of years of social development. And it’s time we focus on what we are good at and stop trying to copy everyone else. If you want evidence of this, look at the football played by the rest of the world, and look at the football we play. Our football is a uniquely American idea, and most of the star players are not decedents from Europe. But the concept is all American. The other things to study are who made the last blockbuster film from Tokyo, or Paris? How about London? They all make films, but the films produced are often reflective, by default, of the cultures that produce them. You want to know about a culture, study their art. And studying American art is easy, go to your local video store. Our films are the envy of the world because American culture has so much to say, because we actually think and naturally question authority.

So let’s get back to a guy like Walt Disney, who never went to college. He dropped out of high school at age 16 even, and never came close to entering college. Books by themselves could and have been written about Disney. But the short of it is this, who has been able to replace Disney as a media empire? What foreign company has come close to equally Walt Disney? Don’t you think they would if they could? George Lucas is the closest that comes to my mind, and he uses Disney’s model. And before you say Disney as a company has made more money since the theme parks opened in the 70’s than it did while he was alive, it was that they stayed true to his vision and did not stray. So they’ve kept the quality of his work intact.

After Walt Disney died, the animation division faltered and was not resurrected until the 90’s with when Jeffery Katzenberg took over the animation division. Most of Disney’s modern era animation films, which they are known for, came while Katzenberg was at Disney. Once he and Michael Eisner had a power struggle where Eisner failed to promote Katzenberg to president of the company, Eisner left to found DreamWorks with Steven Spielberg. And before you say that Pixar, a Disney company that still makes great animated films, which was started by George Lucas and bought by Disney, they didn’t develop that on their own.

However, not since Jeffery Katzenberg left Disney’s animation division has Disney been able to recapture the magic, and they are still waiting for that special guy to come and help them make great animated musicals again. The reasons I bring all this up is because consider the power the Disney Corporation has. Consider the reach they have. Think of all the top students at all the universities all across the country that wish to work for Disney. And they have vast resources to develop with, yet why is it so difficult to put out a film like The Little Mermaid again? Because people like Katzenberg, Walt Disney, George Lucas, and those types of people, cannot be duplicated in an institution. No matter how hard they try, no class anywhere can create people who produce at that high level.

If the intention were to teach students to be thinkers at a high level, it would be a different story, and one that I could see would be something of value. But the intention is only to produce some mediocre specimen in a social context. None of my experience at college or even grade school has shown me there is any quest in the student body to find the exceptional among us, except in sports.

There’s nothing wrong if you did go out and pursued a degree, and spent a great deal of money on it. But the degree will not make you the next Walt Disney or Henry Ford, just so long as everyone understands that.

While it’s true that things were different back in the early days of the industrial revolution, and very few people pursued a formal education then, the same rules apply in the modern era. Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard. He did find some friends there that helped him work out his thoughts, but what at Harvard was some professor going to do for someone as forward thinking as Gates? He set up a deal with Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems(MITS), after reading a popular science article and told them he and his friends had been working on a BASIC interpreter for the platform. In truth, they had not, but they figured it out in time for a meeting with the MITS president a few weeks later. One thing led to another and pretty soon Gates and Paul Allen started Microsoft within a few months.

Steven Spielberg snuck onto the lot of Universal Studios and set up an office and pretended to be important and just sort of hung around as an unpaid intern. He applied three times to USC’s School of Theater but was turned down because of his C average. So he enrolled at California State University at Longbeach. But it was his sneaking onto the lot of Universal that got his career moving. 35 years later, Spielberg did get a degree at USC; I suppose to prove a point, that after he made some of the most successful movies of all time.

What colleges have done is firmly imbed themselves into politics. It is now an expected part of our culture. Parents begin saving for their children’s college before their kids even enter kindergarten. And it is an unfashionable taboo to question the institutional process even though much of the liberal oriented political viewpoints are imposed by professors upon the students at universities. Not necessarily a harmful thing directly, but does become a force to contend with at election time when millions of college age students go to vote. The institution then becomes a political weapon.

No matter what you’re political persuasion is, having an entire age group think in one political manner does not accurately reflect the values of the society at large. As it currently is, higher education is a powerful mechanism for the DNC, and for that type of vote buying power, they should be paying us for the influence they have over our kids. Not us paying them.

Not all students buy into the liberal positions of colleges, and of course not all professors are liberal hippies. But overwhelmingly, the young people between 18 and 22 are likely to believe in gun control, social reforms, and minority rights, as important voting issues in an election. And that makes the institution not just something that will get them a professional position at some company.

Woodrow Wilson went from being president of Princeton University, to governor of New Jersey, then soon after, President of the United States. He is responsible for the League of Nations which paved the way for the United Nations. And while he worked with England and France to divide up the post World War 1 Europe through the Treaty of Versailles. During this wonderful divide, the Middle East was created which led to most of the current troubles in the region today. Iraq was formed due to the Treaty. Germany was forced to pay the reparations of the war completely, which bankrupted them and gave Hitler a platform to rise, and a young Vietnamese bus boy at the Ritz in Paris called Ho Chi Minh begged for a chance to plead for Vietnam’s independence to Wilson, who was ignored because Vietnam was not near the issues of Europe. At that time, Ho Chi Minh was a nationalist, and a fan of the American Revolution. He wanted the same for his county, but when the League of Nations wouldn’t listen he turned to the communists in the Soviet Union which eventually led to the Vietnam War, more on that later. So with all the great intentions Wilson had in forming a massive League of Nations, that stood on the high ground of morality and international good will, he really screwed up. In historical context ninety years isn’t very long, but it exceeds our short memories as Americans. It is difficult to look that far back and see how decisions made then impact now. But they sure did. The Treaty of Versailles caused World War II, The Vietnam War, and the Gulf War, both of them. And that is the model of the current United Nations. With all the current activity going on at the old Palace of Nations in Geneva we can only guess at the many plots boiling there that will impact us twenty, thirty years down the road. But that’s just me talking from the front of the train. All you in the back enjoy the ride.

Wilson is a hero to the progressive movement, and the modern democrats as well as colleges across the country because he was in essence an intellectual, like them, so he is widely followed. But looking at the Treaty of Versailles, even though the intentions were good, turned out to be absolutely devastating to the American way of life.
Institutions whether you’re talking about a typical college, or something like Six Sigma are not American ideas. They are foreign ideas, and should be available under the umbrella of freedom. But of the founding fathers, which Jefferson graduated from the college of William and Mary, Madison from Princeton, and Adams from Harvard, George Washington did not go to any college, and he was the first president, and that says a lot about our character. It wasn’t just the bravery he exhibited, but there was a sense of logic to whatever Washington did. But he wasn’t the only found father that did not attend college. Ben Franklin was never schooled beyond age 10. Come to think of it, Abraham Lincoln never attended a university. He passed the bar exam by reading books on his own, sometimes walking over 12 miles to borrow a book as a kid.
Here’s the bottom line. Using a European model for colleges, and an Asian model for programs like Six Sigma, institutions have within a 200 year span of time, and most rapidly since the industrial revolution, taken over much of what we do and how we do it in America. And it has been a slow poison that has robbed us of our vigor. In our freedom from the shackles the rest of the world has been burdened with whether it is feudal families of Asia, or kingdoms of Europe, we developed truly original ideas that has greatly improved the livelihood of most of earth. And we have been raised with massive corn fields, and farms, and shopping malls, and free press for all of our adult lives. But to us all, the institutions feel wrong, and we know it on an innate level, but feel powerless to question the process because we all need jobs to fuel our personal economies. So when our business leaders, lazily copy off each other, because that’s human nature, and listen without thought to Jack Welch spew on about Six Sigma and how much money they saved, a careful investigator would ask, Jack, why did you need the Japanese to tell you how to create a product with little waste and deliver it on time to a customer? What he really meant to say, but couldn’t is that GE is a huge union company and he needed some program like Six Sigma that is too complicated for union stewards to understand, to sell the idea of actually applying common sense to everyday business practices. But what he did, like the blundering escapade of the Treaty of Versailles is creating more institutional limits to the American Imagination, good intentions gone badly.

So powerless to take in the whole picture, we watch our football games and drink our beer. We talk about going out at night and getting hammered and root for the players on a football field where the rules are simple. Get a first down, score a touchdown.
And that is the real cost of this institutionalized society we’re currently in. At a personal level, we feel it, but in most cases we’re willing to trade a decent wage for some loss of personal input. But on a national level, we’re allowing influences from the outside to define our national identity. When the reality is that no place else in the world has the ingenuity that has come from the United States been shown, why would we be so willing to listen to inferior strategies?

Being a great leader, manager, politician, or even an artist requires vision, and that is something institutions cannot give you. They can help you set goals, and figure out how to get the analytic data. But they cannot give you the vision to see what is coming. Only those that are willing, and bold enough to put themselves out on the cutting edge, and not hide in the safety of the masses, will have the ability to make their vision a reality.

Rich Hoffman
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Ross Perot Then, Now and Forever

The talk going on today with people like Glenn Beck and others are not new. I remember being in Dallas, Texas the day before the election in 1992. Ross Perot’s oldest daughter and her husband gave me a neck tie that I wish I still had while in the parking lot of the Perot Headquarters. I thought then Ross Perot was doing some good work, and I did everything I could to help him back then. I’m not new to all this small government stuff.

For the fun of it, I decided to go back and dig through some of his old videos. In hind sight, how right he was. People should have listened.

And he is still at it. Too bad most people want to take the blue pill.

Rich Hoffman

http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Glenn Beck, George Soros, and My Explosive Announcement

Two stories on The Blaze.com this week put my mind into overdrive. There was the collection of comments from George Soros which exposed his true intentions toward the United States in favor of his global pursuits, and then there were the clips from the Comedy Central Daily Show where Jon Stewart made fun of Glenn Beck for pointing out how Soros manipulates those around him to realize his vision.

While we’re in a season of Thanksgiving, I give my thanks to Glenn Beck for holding strong in the face of all the opposition, and continuing to provide insight into the dark exploits of the very rich, very corrupt, and the many, many people that will sell their lives away for a good income, who make themselves willing pawns to people like George Soros. That’s not to take away from my own family or good fortune. But we all need a country to raise our families in, and I am thankful that Beck has put the issues threatening the country on the table for all to see, so we can take steps as Americans to do something about it.

Soros indirectly has had an influence on Hollywood, which Beck hasn’t spent much time covering. His money and those like him are heavily sought after to bankroll films. Anyone that knows the film industry a little knows that Robert Redford’s Sundance film festival is the premier film festival in the country and studios watch it closely for new talent. And, George Soros has contributed a lot of money to the Sundance Institute. Soros is financing the film Better This World which is about the left wing terrorists that plotted to kill republicans at the 2008 GOP convention. And with other money being either directly or indirectly funded to film projects it is no wonder why Hollywood has moved in a radically left political direction. And I personally blame people like Soros for why Hollywood no longer knows how to produce a good western, and why the symbols of American individualism, the cowboy, have been reduced in the minds of the public to drunken fools abusing Indians.

One of the best books I’ve ever read is The Frontiersman. This is something that every kid in grade school should have to read as part of their understanding of history. But, it doesn’t fit with the progressive platform, and is therefore not encouraged as reading material. Dances with Wolves, although a good movie is not a typical western, but does embrace the progressive platform. A book like The Frontiersman does not, so it is ignored by the media outlets, even though the book is a far superior novel, it will never be made into a film while progressives control the funding structure in Hollywood.

Soros recently donated 1 million dollars to Proposition 19 in California to legalize Marijuana use, and I found that absolutely appalling. Many of the talking points about being able to collect taxes off the legalized use, and cost savings of decriminalization were very similar to the campaign I was involved in with education reform in Ohio and that was terrible. So there is no question as to Soros motivations. Proposition 19 is another progressive platform icon, which thankfully failed.

So how do we combat people like Soros and his attempts to undermine American Culture? Well, you do it the way he’s done it, except you turn it back on them. Beck has done that to some extent. The money he has made off his books and various enterprises, he has spent on research into the kind of activity he’s been reporting. Money can flow in the other direction if people are willing to put their money where their mouth like Glenn Beck has done, and because of the urgency of the situation, I am too.

In 2004 I wrote a book called The Symposium of Justice. Starting on November 1st of this year, any profit I get from the sale of this book will go to reforms in education, which the teachers unions are against, and spend a great deal of money preventing. The connection between teacher unions and Soros is that they both spend their money on democratic candidates to implement their desires. So I plan to use the money generated by The Symposium of Justice to combat that influence.

If you’re looking for a hot new gift for Christmas or someone’s birthday, or to read for yourself, the profit I receive will go to a good cause and I can promise you I will create explosive results.

The book is available at Amazon.com or by request at your local book store. And remember, as is the motto of The Symposium of Justice, “Justice comes with the crack of a whip.”

As to Beck’s visit to Wilmington, I will be there for sure. It’s practically just down the road for me. I know Wilmington extremely well. I missed 8/28 due to a wedding. I won’t miss this one!

Rich Hoffman

http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior

www.overmanwarrior.com

Government Spending is on Everyone’s Mind: I’m not the only one talking about it.

I’m not the only one saying that government is spending too easy the money that we gave them as tax payers. It’s far too easy to spend other people’s money.

I can’t think of a time in my lifetime when this many different people spoke about the spending problems of government. The problem is at all levels and its each and every person’s responsibility, if you’re a teacher, it’s time to start rearranging your life to something more manageable, because things will not stay the way they have forever. If you’re a superintendent, you need to do the same. In fact if you work for the government in any fashion, you need to make those adjustments now. Get your financial obligations down so you can endure the change.

The tax payers want to pay you well for the service you provide. But the days of blind foolish spending are gone.
Rich Hoffman

www.NoLakotaLevy.com

Being Good and Being Right

One thing you’ll find, whether it’s Arnold Engle of Fairfield, or Jennifer Miller from Mason, if you speak out against a school levy, you will be labeled and ridiculed to no end. This is exclusively due to a process of manipulation invented by Saul Alinsky’s Delphi Technique which is used by large organizations such as teachers unions to manipulate a community’s desire to the goals of the union leadership. They may not call it The Delphi Technique officially, but may only be some variation of it. But the strategy is just the same.
Now most people, such as Tony ‘Ambrosio and Leslie Renneker who addressed me in the Pulse Journal directly, are obviously only concerned about their individual situations. People like them want naturally what’s best for their children, and their neighborhood. They don’t look too deeply into things and are quiet happy to keep it that way.

When this Levy started at Lakota, I had no real intention of saying much. I do have my value system, and I think the public education system doesn’t do enough. I see it as vastly insufficient to producing American citizens. But I generally leave it to the public to make up their own minds in the election. However, I was reading the forums on The Pulse Journal web site, and noticed that a “facilitator” or “change agent” was working the board on behalf of the Pro Levy Campaign, as far back as August. When I left a comment that I thought was thoughtful and constructive the facilitator called directly attacked me calling me pathetic for my comment. Now I didn’t bring up the car issue. Somone else did. People never use their real names for these things, so who knows. I do, but for some reason people feel they can only have courage when their discreet. Anyway, all I did was point out that people were sensitive, and that the pro side should take that into consideration. I highlighted my comments in bold.

It was on that day that I decided to call up Mark and the rest of the people from the last campaign and join forces with them. Because I realized that if there were people like “think” working these forums, they were doing the same thing to voters in other ways as well. And that sent my blood boiling. It was the very next day after my last comment on this forum that The No Lakota Levy group was officially formed. And it was one month later that we went on WLW with the wage release information.

So as far as me looking for a fight, this fight found me. And when a fight comes to me, and I see clearly that there are people being hurt, and manipulated, and lied to, I will stand up to meet that fight.
I already had my commercial activities with bullwhips, books, and a few film projects here and there before any of this started. And this activity has been distracting from my usual passions. But the more you dig into it, the more wrong you find.

Read below how the Pro Levy Group was working in August, and if left unchecked, they would have continued with the intimidation and name calling because that is the way The Delphi Technique works. Pay particular attention to the posts left by “THINK.” There are other “professional” facilitator’s on these posts and they are obvious as well. Their goal is to control the flow of the discussion. If you speak against them, they resort to name calling in an attempt to keep those opinions off the board. It’s that simple.

11:35 PM, 8/18/2010
NO-VEMBER. Vote no on tax levy issue. NO-VEMBER. For those who want a private education, go pay for one. Lakota is a fine public school being run like a university. Go back to the basics and regroup. Lakota needs to cut like many families are doing throughout the country. Cuts always smart, but today requires it.
Daniel Moorman

2:07 PM, 8/27/2010
Still looking for a good deal on a house. Mark or Carlos are too busy with all the foreclosures that they are getting to fool with a peon like me. They want to deal with “professional” types. Don’t they know that they are the ones losing their homes and crying over 700 extra a year in taxes. Mark and Carlos are going to be making big money again….it is just a lucrative cycle for them.
HouseHunter

9:41 PM, 8/28/2010
I noticed the girls golf coach at LE driving aroung in a nice red Jag. Must be nice!

But the all one

2:54 PM, 8/29/2010

Are you really worrying about what car teachers/coaches are driving? LOL…is your life that pathetic and full of jealousy? What is her thermostat set on in her house? Does she shop at Wal-mart or Macy’s? Please go ahead and vote no, but stop showing how ignorant your thoughts are!
Are you kidding?

3:03 PM, 8/29/2010
Is the jealousy so rampant in West Chester that they are looking at what kind of car teachers drive? I think that is so typical of the snooty people that are in reality just getting by in the “Chester.” Maybe they should cut back on their own spending and then they wouldn’t be so jealous when they see others doing OKAY. For the record I know a teacher that drives a ten year old Jag that is worth about 4 grand….What should she drive?
Wow….

6:24 PM, 8/29/2010
Of course people are looking at what kind of cars teachers are driving. Most people have been on a wage freeze for over a year now. And many would love to average 51K a year. Tenured teachers are pretty secure in their jobs, unlike many of the voters out there, people will be jealous….of course.

Shame the kids suffer because of politics. Out of space, read more here:

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com…
Rich Hoffman

9:24 PM, 8/29/2010
Hey Rich, I was going to eat at Wendy’s and guess what I saw? I saw a teacher going in to eat at APPLEBEE’S! Can you believe that? I think they were driving a 2010 Chevy. I could not believe it. How many of us out here in West Chester would love to be able to eat at Applebee’s? Teacher’s should be ashamed for flaunting their wealth in our faces. Some think you are pathetic Rich, but I admire you for standing up for us beaten down West Chesters!
Lakotian

12:27 PM, 8/31/2010
What parking lot have you been stalking today Rich? You see any expensive cars in the lot? Did they belong to teachers, administrators or parents? Let us know what you find out. I thought Bob was pathetic but I think you might give him a run for the title.
Where you at Rich?

1:05 PM, 8/31/2010
Pathetic…..there’s that word again. Name calling? Intimidation?
4:00 PM, 9/1/2010

All I did was point out that it was logical that people would draw conclusions about the type of car people drive. If you can’t handle that, you are out of touch. No wonder things cost so much money if you can’t understand that basic concept.

I can see what we are dealing with. Bad move on your part……..

I was very happy to have a civil debate and let the public decide. You decided to make it personal.
Rich Hoffman

7:19 PM, 8/31/2010
And to those of you that think calling someone pathetic will somehow make money magically appear from thin air, and maintain the status quo, I prepared this little blog just for you.

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com…

Look at your own life and then consider if you have a right to call anyone names because they don’t agree with you, or simply brought up a valid point.

Pathetic……..????? That’s cute.
Rich Hoffman

Rich, I don’t think pathetic was a proper term to call someone, but I think it is sad if you think it is “mature” to bring up what kind of car a teacher/coach drives. What does that have to do with anything? Pathetic? No! Sad? Yes! Just my opinion, but everyone has their own likes, and I don’t give a hoot what someone drives. Not sure why is would bother you. Oh and Rich I am not a teacher, but I do drive an Audi TT, hope that is alright and acceptable.
Maria

11:28 PM, 9/1/2010

Went to the “manwarrior” site and wasn’t too imressed…lol. My two cents would be that if you think it is appropiate to make commments about what type of car a teachers drives then I would have to agree that you have a big problem. It seems pretty silly with all the problems going on in the world. Hey what would I know though, because I am not a “manwarrior”? Whatever that is?…..Vote your conscience and if it is NO, then so be it….life will go on.
Lakotian

Stinks,

You have very slow reaction time since my note to Brenda was sent a long time ago. You must be getting old…go back to your rocking chair on the porch and stop yelling at the kids for walking across your yard.
Think

9:16 AM, 9/2/2010
Stinks,

First of all, many would argue that SS and Medicare are not American. I’m not in that camp: yet, I think it is arrogant to suggest you shouldn’t have to pay taxes to support the kids because your kids are no longer participating and out of the other side of your mouth say pay for my SS and medicare.

Do your part! Own up to your responsibilities. If you can’t afford it, get a job!
Think
9:11 AM, 9/2/2010

1:19 PM, 9/2/2010
Stinks,

What poor Brenda doesn’t get is that it’s not the government that will give her the 3% increase in her SS check, it’s not her too low past contributions either, it’s me!

She want’s everything for herself; but, somehow thinks its unfair that she has to pay into school taxes. If she can’t afford it, she needs to get a job to make up for her poor planning.
Think
4:37 PM, 9/4/2010
Avg,

Would it be right to say, “I never call the fire department…set a user fee up for that. I never drive on Tylersville road…set up a toll booth”?

What do you think? I don’t believe there are any state mandates for local roads or fire departments. Let’s go back to the old days…if you want to buy fire department insurance so be it. If you don’t so be it.

Geeze you guys are stupid
Think

11:00 AM, 9/5/2010
Most people already have their minds made up and some have been made up my lies that were told on blogs like this. That is okay because that is why this country is so great. Freedom! So let’s get the vote on and if it is no, that is fine, because the majority will decide. I will continue to call out liars as I see them.
Minds Made up!

10:39 AM, 9/7/2010

My dear “Making Stuff Up”….

My view of government’s purpose and yours are vastly different.

You try to draw a comparason between basic government services…. roads(infrastructure), police & fire, etc…. and having the property owners pay for extra-cirricular activities for little Johnny.

That assinine approach is why your side is behind 75% – 25% .(based on your side’s own polling)

10:41 AM, 9/7/2010
Dear below average,

Your view of basic government services that we should “all” pay for encompasses services that “you” use. As a society we’ve greatly expanded the services you consider “basic”. You don’t have to look that far back into our history to find that these services were considered private responsibility.
Think

2:16 PM, 9/7/2010

Dear below average,

Our country/community has a long tradition of considering sports programs as a part of the education system. Only now those such as yourself who’ve squandered your savings and haven’t planned for your future are crying poor. You are rejects from the 60’s me gen. who only think of yourselves. You might wish to change your name to “below average loser”.

Why should we eliminate these basic services that encourage kids development now? Because you are a loser? NO.
Think

4:55 PM, 9/7/2010
Below average,

That’s how you end up with a below average community filled with below average people.

Who wants to move to a backward place like what we’ll likely end up being? Answer…you and your loser family/friends.

I’m embarrassed for our community. How is it that Mason seems to be able to support their kids? The difference is in the make up of the community. We have too many losers here.
Think

Avg Taxpayer
8:07 PM, 9/7/2010
Thinky Boy….
My company told the workforce…15% are going to be laid of (fired), the remainder of you, in order for you to keep your job and for us to stay in business, have to work harder for less money.
I have yet to hear that from ANYONE at Lakota. All I hear is that the teachers have have bigger classroom rosters…

Translated… they need to work harder and they don’t like it. And before you hand me that “it’s all about education” garbage…….

If it was really about educating the kids, no teacher would ever consider walking a picket line.

75-25……

Signed,

Your favorite Loser…..

P.S. when you are out of facts, always call your opponent names… works every time….

It may seem like a small comment to send the word “pathetic” in my direction, but I know it means more than just a name.
And that’s the problem with the people that end up standing against school levies, like Engle, Mrs. Miller and Sharon Poe. They get labeled as radical because they bring up a valid point. And because they may in their private lives be history buffs, or avid readers of various subjects, they are aware that something isn’t right, and they fight back.
Here’s my buddy Jennifer from Mason. I like her fighting attitude.

When a person tries to help, and they get involved, they are singled out as a threat. It happens in every organization. Think of Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer if it helps. Only people like Mr. Engle, and Mrs. Miller along with myself don’t require peer acceptance, so peer pressure doesn’t work, much to the frustration of those that wish to keep the status quo in line.
Here’s Jennifer again after she had been ridiculed by teachers and other members of the board trying to defend herself.

The reason for me that peer pressure doesn’t work is that my best friends in the whole world are my wife, my kids and my books, in that order. As long as I can read, I could care less what the rest of the world thinks of me. And that leaves me free to think about a subject without caring of whether people will judge me poorly.

Here’s my other buddy Sharon Poe also from Mason

It isn’t my fault if people like Mr. D’Ambrosio can’t understand the larger game going on. They just want their home values to stay stable, and for their kids to have decent lives. Before I ever became involved in Lakota’s issues, my research had led me to a place of understanding that many people would feel uncomfortable with. But without question, there are elements to public education that are undesirable for the proper assistance of teaching American boys and girls to become American men and women. And much of this happened because people like D’Ambrosio are too busy paying attention to the values of society instead of thinking about the world around them.

Most people like D’Ambrosio wouldn’t think much about these videos. I see this as radical. But to most, this is normal.

I like the song, but if that was my daughter in that crowd there’d be big trouble for her. Again, this is considered in our society as normal.

My wife and I have been to Cancun. I see this kind of thing and I simply don’t get it. I felt like I was from some other planet. But again, to many people, this is normal behavior.

This is how I spend my time with my family. And this is what is “normal” to me. All the videos below were done by my daughters. Because as a parent, you are judged by the kids you raise. And I’m proud of them. They have brains, and tons of guts.

This is my oldest daughter, and her then fiancé, along with her younger sister an best friend as I drug them all over the United States going to whip shows.

This is my family stuck at home during a heavy snow storm.

And here was a ghost hunt in the rugged hills of Ohio and West Virginia.

Becoming a pilot, at 16.

And this is from my youngest daughter

We spend a lot of time talking about paranormal stuff. But she has never lost her perspective on reality. Science is always first.

The reason I put all these videos up here are because I have never left it to a teacher, or an institution to do what is my responsibility as a parent. And I do look at people who do so with sad contempt at what they are missing. I leave it to society to make decisions in life for themselves. But don’t ask me to pay extraordinary amounts of money for a social experiment that doesn’t live up to my personal standards, which I admit are very high, too high for most people to be comfortable with. Just don’t try and scam me with smoke screens, and intimidation. That will make me very angry, very, very angry.
Because whether you want to admit it or not, this is what has happened in public education.

So before you guys try to paint me as some radical have a look in the mirror and the life you’re living. I’m living my life and I love every day of it. And that love of life gets passed on to the people around me especially my children. I have no sympathy to most of the parents that are using public education as a day care, and wanting the public to help foot the bill, because you’re not trying to teach your child. You’re hiring a teacher to do what you should be doing while you pursue a selfish agenda of your own. So judge me, and you’ll get it right back. If you ask me for money, you’re going to get the wrath of my questions and judgment.

Get used to it.
Rich Hoffman

www.NoLakotaLevy.com

Social Value, Education, Walt Disney and the Great Chuck Yeager

In another post, I put up a list of some of the most successful people in the world that did not go to college. What you find on that list, besides a lot of actors and entertainers that equate to those fortunate enough to strike gold, are many, many billionaires that founded major companies from Dell computer, to the Walt Disney Company.

From my own college experience, I understand clearly what the problem is. Education can only give you some of what you need. Most of the work of starting something from nothing can’t be taught, and if your goal is success, that inspiration has to come from someplace deep inside. Is there a teacher out there that can teach someone to be Richard Branson, George Lucas, or Bill Gates? If they could they would. But they can’t, in fact, a lot of the time, the teacher teaches because they aren’t good at actually doing things in the real world.

So that leaves me to question the validity of the entire institutional system. Now that the Lakota Levy is over, at least this time around, I think it’s time to bring to question what the value of education actually is.

The difficulty in determining the value of education is that so many have built secure incomes off education. What brought the whole issue to my mind was the book Forbidden Archeology which showed to what extremes universities suppressed scientific evidence discovered in the field of archeology and anthropology. The reason for the suppression was to protect their previous scientific finds and the legacy of those revelations, so new evidence was a threat to the security built on those reputations.

To keep it clear sports is the best explanation. Consider what the NFL would be like if great teams were always allowed to draft first in each years draft class. The NFL to keep things competitive and entertaining, created salary caps, so teams would have to make decisions on who they could keep on their teams, and who’d be let go. And they came up with the idea of letting teams with the worst record draft first in the following year’s draft. That way, new teams are always emerging as good teams and competition is always evolving. And we all benefit from the entertainment value.

But in education, we are still teaching kids the same way we did at the turn of the century, even though new methods and computer technology allow for other options. We still have schools shutting down in the summer even though that concept was started to let young men help their fathers on the family farms during harvest season. But, teachers unions have kept that going for the sake of benefits.

I would argue that a teacher standing in the front of a room and teaching as an authoritarian on the given subject is an archaic method long outdated. I would say that teaching children to stand in line at lunch, to stand in line when they walk down the hall to go to recess, to walk in line to go to an assembly, to stand in line for attendance in gym class, and so on and so on are psychologically bad for the development of young people. Because what it teaches them is to follow orders. In the education system we currently have, following orders is the emphasis, and I would argue that mentality is completely wrong for American society.

I can hear you groaning right now dear reader. I can hear your questions. But understand something in my explanation here, I am questioning the very foundation upon which everything is built, because to my eyes it is not perfect, and does not produce the type of individuals American society needs, so it is subject to ridicule. It is quite probable that you as the reader are a victim to a lifetime of acceptance to this established system, so to question it will be difficult for you. I understand.

But, for the sake of this article, forget everything you ever learned, and suspend your belief system and look with the eyes of a person new to the culture you exist in, and enjoy the revelations that befall you.

Consider for a moment how idiotic the hazing rituals of college are. The drinking games, the insults from your peers, the ridiculous dares that take place, the structure of those rituals are technically insane. But is it a mystery as to why those belonging to a fraternity have a network from which to launch their careers? Isn’t it strange the rituals of the bachelor party which seem to be important to many males, especially those belonging to fraternities where their “brotherhood” reflects a deep bond that exceeds or equals the bond with the wife to be. And to the sorority sisters the same mentality holds true. The night before their weddings is inundated with penis worship. The women, particularly sorority sisters gather and bond among rituals of drinking and male strippers. But why? What is to be accomplished in these ceremonies? If you are an employer, and are looking for a nice obedient employee that will know their place and not challenge the authority structure, a frat boy is an attractive option, because they know their place. And in the scope of these rituals as the participants emerge into marriage, the brothers and sisters have a shared secret that bonds them, and ensures the continuation of the bond in respect to the new marriage. Secrets create a bond.

With fraternities and sororities, which serve basically the same role as the military soldier that gets off the bus and is yelled at by a drill sergeant prior to getting their hair cut, which is the beginning of a mental transformation as an individual and into the collective identity of a soldier. And thus, are the two primary paths that young people take after high school. Now during high school and grade school there are many smaller rituals that occur. By the time a youngster is a senior in high school, they know their peer groups. They know where they fit into the social stratus, and this seems to be the number one goal of grade school. The athletes achieve the top social order. The other students that participate in the extracurricular activities to a lesser degree make up the next. Then you have the scholastically strong, and then you have all the rest to varying degrees down to the rejects that fall through the cracks for various reasons turning to drugs and alcohol earlier than the rest of the young people. The goal of all discussed in this paragraph is to allow the individual to find out where they fit into the peaking order of society.

Now be honest with yourself. What is the greatest concern you had in grade school, or college? How about now? When your neighbor buys a new grill, do you feel the urge to get a new one as well? Do you feel that the car you drive is a display to your neighbors, friends and family to the status of your placement in society? Or your house? Or the wife or husband that you’ve obtained for yourself? What are the true values that you hold dear?

If the values were healthy ones, and you were happy with yourself and your life, then you wouldn’t over-eat and carry around that huge stomach, or that giant caboose, or you wouldn’t be divorced, or on your second or third marriage. You wouldn’t be taking high blood pressure medicine, or taking drugs to deal with depression. If you were happy with your life you would never desire to become drunk, because such a state is an escape from yourself, if only for a short time.

My point is not to lecture you. But it is to point out that if the system worked, then people wouldn’t be broken all around us. It’s not necessarily their fault. They’ve been taught to be broken. They’ve been taught to be only a fraction of themselves. There is an old saying that it is “not good to be too good.” The reason why is that being good, being exceptional, are threats to the animalistic peaking order of our social structure.

I received over the Lakota Levy Campaign letter after letter from angry teachers and parents who want to overlook all the obvious problems of the current system in favor of keeping the system intact. They have completely bought into much of this nonsense, and the prospect that it is all meaningless is just simply too much for them to fathom. They come across sounding like children still developing their emotional states, but the danger is that they are actually parents themselves, passing on to children the same neurotic states they are currently professing.

And I’d be lying if I said I was surprised when the Lakota Levy failed, and there were tears from the people supporting the whole thing. They simply cannot see the phantoms that dictate the funding model. They cannot through their training see beyond the patriotism of their alter mater.

Do you know what alter mater means? It was used in ancient Rome as a title for various mother goddesses. In modern times, it is often a school, college, or university attended during one’s formative years. So throughout the lives of many, their alter mater will always be important to them, a ground for which to place their footing. However, it is tragic that such beliefs do not allow one to see the faults of the system of their upbringing. To see faults for such people is to literally see the faults of ones parents.
Now such a thing does happen when young people move into their teens. They cast off the garb of their parents and move into some of the various paths of institutionalism. Many schools are literally many people’s second mother experience.
I once watched football players reciting the Ohio State song during the conclusion of a football game. And the crowd in the stands was noticeably emotional, so the whole experience was a ceremonial one. The collectivism displayed to me was very disconcerting. To the participants, it was comforting, like a mother’s hug. To me, it was a disgusting display of childlike behavior from what should be grown adults.

So what many of these blind patriots clinging to their alter mater share is that they cannot see what cancers inhabit these mothers, because they are unable to digest the criticism toward a loved one.
What permeates these institutions is a level of socialist thought designed to undermine American society. Such thoughts are foreign to these lovers of their second mothers because to their frail minds, war is always fought with guns and in far away lands. But some wars do not involved physical domination. And they don’t involve guns. But they are psychological warfare initiated during the Cold War to dismantle American society. And it is so subtle that even the people within the system can not see it, because they are too close to see.
And this is the problem with education as an occupation. Through collective bargaining, socialist have dominated organized unions and they have made it very lucrative through their use of Saul Alinskey to drive wages up to levels that caused people not to question their methods, because the money they offer brings a level of comfort to the participants of the union. But what is really happening is that in exchange for that income, teachers and administrators are willing to sacrifice their personal freedoms in exchange for that secure middle class income. And that is the strategy of socialists, is to bring down the top level achievers to create a collective middle class. And they have established themselves in our education systems.

I read a book called the Frontiersman several years ago by the great author Alan Eckart and I was shocked that the first time I ran into that material I was as a grown man, because honestly I should have been given that book when I studied Ohio History in the fourth grade. The book may be a bit too hard of a read for a fourth grader, but it certainly should have been recommended reading by 8th grade. The book chronicles the life of Simon Kenton and his battles with the Indian leaders such as Tecumseh and Blue Jacket. It features Daniel Boone, George Washington, and many other characters critical to life on the frontier in 1750 on. It is action packed and shows Indians eating settlers. It has graphic battles and shows the treachery capable between the French and the English. It is a marvelous book.
But in school, I was taught that Indians were Native Americans with an emphasis on the encroachment of the white man upon Native American land. I was taught that slavery was all important instead of one part of the history of the United States. I was taught the merits of feminism. The merits of tolerance, and on and on along those lines. It was dreadfully boring. In fact I remember asking my eight grade English teacher why we had to read Romeo and Juliet, and Hamlet. I asked the same question to my ninth grade teacher, where we read the same material again. It wasn’t till I was in my thirties that I read for the first time Titus Andronicus. And I asked, “Why did I not read this in the eighth grade!” I would have read all of Shakespeare by the conclusion of my eighth grade year for fun if I had known that Titus was such a great play! But I had to discover that on my own, away from schools unfortunately.

On of the times I went to college, on the first day of school in my philosophy class the professor instructed us that we would begin a study of Tao Te Ching, a book I had read on my own over a weekend a couple of years earlier. I took three classes and realized I was wasting my time. I already had developed leadership skills at the time that companies would be willing to hire me for. I thought a degree would help me in some way, but I found that to not be the case once I had started working and developed a network to work within, because companies always need leadership. But what did I need out of a college that spent three weeks studying a book that the students should read over the weekend? I saw the same blank looks on my class mates in college that I saw in high school; the “I have to be here” look “so I can get a certification,” so I can get a good job. I decided in that philosophy class that the instructor was just going through the motions. He was just studying what had come, and he had no ambition to produce something for the future. He was just collecting a paycheck, like the rest of the professors. It looked like a big scam to me, all three times that I went, I always came back to the same conclusion.
I also have recollections of a high school party that I once went to where I sat in the living room of a nice Lakota home where the parents were out of town, and the kid that lived their had a party where most of the senior and junior class showed up. MTV was a rather new thing back then, and was on in the living room and a bunch of kids were watching a video of Pink Floyd’s The Wall playing. Most of the room was smoking pot and drinking voracious amounts of alcohol. I sat stunned even then at the herd like mentality of the kids. I did not participate in their drunken splendor or the mind numbing drugs. I was happy to talk to a girl that wanted some male company, but that’s all I wanted from such events. The social aspect of those events meant nothing.

I saw the same kind of mentality from the college kids at Miami University where I went to see a girl I knew at the time there. She was in a massive sorority party that took up an entire apartment complex. Every room I’d go in had kids smoking pot. Some of the rooms were the size of a large closet and might have 20 to 50 people packed into them all passing around a joint. The girl I went to see had given oral sex to at least two guys that I knew of that night. One of the guys was engaged to be married to a girl that was in the other room with a room full of guys passed completely out and had lost every bit of her cloths. Nobody cared. I see these type of events glorified in films like Hangover, which I thought was funny, but if you think about it, we’ve all come to accept the term, “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” We don’t bat an eye at such despicable behavior. Rather, it is common now. We send our daughters to school, and pay small fortunes to do so. And we watch secretly those same girls our daughter’s age stripping off their tops and going topless in spring break activity which we endorse with our barbaric lust. And we tell our sons to take all the women they can while they still can, before they reduce themselves to the marriage to one woman for the rest of their lives.

I went to such events completely sober and watched with distance. Later that same night the friends I went to the party with, who were drunk got into a fight with the football team for the university. It was comical and easy to win a fight against a mob of drunken fools. But my friends ended up in jail while I had the presence of mind to leave the scene while police cleaned up the bodies like they were shoveling snow. The university covered for the football players, who actually started the fight. My friends were released once they sobered up. While that was going on, I sat in a Wendy’s by myself and watched late into the early morning the foolish college kids, many of which were older than me at the time, living a life style of complete recklessness, and I sat there reading my book, Yeager, which was about the life of Chuck Yeager, a person I greatly admire.

I could literally tell you thousands of such stories, because for a time in my late teens and into my early twenties, when the world told me to be one way, and that I had to travel down this college path, or that military path, I rejected both. I wanted absolutely nothing to do with either system. Actually, I became something of an outlaw in the eyes of society, until I meant my wife just before one of the worst car wrecks I had ever been in, the second car crash that had taken place at over 100 mph in a year. Neither time was I the driver. At that time I married her, and retired to a life of reading, which I have done ever since. And I have found that college was breeding sheep. I craved to live the life of a lion. You have to decide in life whether you’re going to be the hammer or the nail. The education system like any good factory is producing millions and millions of nails. But only the hand crafted craftsman is making hammers. And my becoming a hammer was forged with much pain, but it has been a journey well worth taking.
So my opinions come from a source of personal observation where I looked at the facts, and asked the question as to where this was going. And I rejected it in favor of my own education. And I will say that at the time, Chuck Yeager had more to do with that than anyone.
Yeager had shot down more enemies in a single day than anyone else in the European theater during World War II in his Mustang and he wasn’t a college trained pilot. He had raw instinct that always gave him an edge over everyone else. I shared with Chuck lightning reflexes that I used when driving and racing cars illegally, and a raw nerve that helped me in many circumstances. Yeager had those traits and that is why he developed into a world class test pilot for the Air Force. He developed a great relationship with engineers who lacked Chuck’s natural ingenuity. And it was because Chuck was a rare breed of man even for that time that allowed him to break the sound barrier in the X-1 over the civilian pilot Slick Goodlin who demanded $150,000 to fly the X-1. Chuck did it because he just wanted to do it. So he was in it for the right reasons.

I can relate.

Such images had a powerful impact on me that I carried all my life. I am proud to report that I have always taken that stance even when the temptation of powerful politics and business influence dangled the carrot in front of my face. I decided that I’d rather be my own man; self made that no alter mater could take credit for. And if society didn’t like it, to hell with them! At the end of my life, I’d have a clean soul and I’d be proud of it.
Of course taking such a stance will get you into a lot of trouble, and it has. One notable time that involved a labor union that I was actually in, yet I refused to pay dues to them, didn’t like the idea that I was asked to work the weekend at a company I worked for, because union rules said the foreman should have asked the employees with more seniority first, caused a massive stink, which caused four of the shop stewards to corner me in the bathroom for a fight. I had a reputation of fighting one on one, so they decided that four of them might intimidate me. It didn’t.
We agreed to meet after work so none of us would get fired. I went to the agreed upon vacant lot to meet these guys for a fight. And guess what, they didn’t show up. I was there by myself watching these tough union stewards driving up and down the road revving up their engines trying to intimidate me like some silly animal making noise to frighten their pry. Only they didn’t know what to do when I wasn’t frightened by their actions.
It is clear to me where civilization fails, and when good people trade away their freedoms for a bit of security, something dies in them. And you can see it on their faces. Their skin is dying prematurely. Their health is usually bad, or is going bad. They usually can’t endure much by way of stress. In men, they suffer from erectile dysfunction, in women a lack of desire for the act. And all this starts with the values we give to ourselves through our education system which clearly extends beyond reading, writing and arithmetic.
So when those carcasses of living flesh proclaim to me that I cannot teach a class-room, or that I did not get a college degree, or that I did not follow down a path that they understand, and therefore cannot understand their situation, they are like children asking me to explain something that they do not have the life experience yet to understand, because they have not yet lived life. And in many cases, that includes those that are ready to retire from a life they consider hard work, and they are ready to collect that pension they worked hard to preserve. I can not explain to them the sound of the wind, or the heat of the sun, when they have lived their whole lives confined to the controlled circumstances of academia, and the powers that perpetuate political influence from that platform.

To say that in this day an age education is a must for success and that no longer can people do as Chuck Yeager did, because these days you must have college. Those are only the rules of established society, and companies that continue to advocate such beliefs will continue to find that the employees they take out of the education system are watered down products not quite up to the tasks they are looking for. The exceptional find such restraints too confining and the best of the best reject it all together willing to suffer the lack of security for the clear vision being free of obligation to alter maters provides.
I would dare say that the success of Glenn Beck is a modern example of just such a philosophy. He stays ahead of the curve and is clear in his outlooks because he does not have the burden of being educated not to see. How many people have come along like Walt Disney, a guy with only a high school education, much like Glenn Beck? Steven Spielberg also didn’t have a college education when he was doing his best stuff. And now that he’s bought in to some of the progressive philosophies, his ability to wield the magic of the past is gone. It’s gone from him as a filmmaker.

So what conclusion can we make? Are the most successful among us freaks of nature, beyond the scope of normal mankind? Is it impossible to think that the kid living next door to you may not be the next Walt Disney? I would say that our education system as it currently is dotted with a socialist mentality from grade one to the doctorate in college, is teaching us not to reach for the stars, and to settle for the muddy middle where a strong middle class promises a life of few lows in life, but also few highs either. And a rather eventless story at the end of one’s personal book only to be lost in the annuals of time, where much bolder and action packed stories will reside in the memory of the human race.
And do not think that the conventional path taken is the path of purity, and do not subject those that reject your choice with additional taxes. I respect your decision to live a life as described in this article. But don’t ask me to fund such a despicable existence.

Rich Hoffman

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