When many thought I had lost my mind months ago by publicly calling my political opponents latté sipping prostitutes with asses the size or car tires, I knew what I was doing. They thought I was playing by the old rules of politics that they had established. But I wasn’t. I was reflecting the front of the train mentally where people are beginning to realize that you cannot argue with some political ideologies, while others are out-right dangerous, and cannot be reasoned with. When those ideologies are confronted, they must be crushed without apology because no matter how nice you are to those types, or how much you attempt to cooperate with them, they have their agenda, and they will lie, steal, and manipulate anything it takes to destroy you. So compromise is not a definition compatible with the current war we are in. And at the front of this war of ideas are books of old and books of new along with movies competing with the entertainment that has captured generations. The battle is being fought there, for the hearts and minds of audiences in music, movies, television and books.
This is why Atlas Shrugged has been so important in fueling the Tea Party movement, because such burning movements need food for the thoughts, so that context can be placed on the argument. And the movie version of Atlas Shrugged increases book sales, which ultimately gets more people thinking seriously about free market economies and personal liberty. Communists have The Communist Manifesto and they have used it like a club to hammer America into the kind of mixed economy, mixed political ideology that America is enduring presently. So it is only fair that those of us who reject those ideas are using Atlas Shrugged as our own club to beat down the communists, who are virtually everywhere like a termite nest in a hollowed out tree. From the outside the tree looks healthy with leaves on the branches until a great storm comes and breaks the tree in half with a heavy wind to reveal how much damage the termites have done over a long period of time. So for me, and it appears the makers of Atlas Shrugged Part II–we are at war, and we are working toward common goals. We are at war against collectivism and the machine that was built-in the entertainment industry to advance communism through the college professor who taught young media students journalism, to the story editors who work for the major Hollywood studios, to the producers who associate with Communist Party USA directly or indirectly through the Democratic Party, to the film critics who work for the newspapers. It is time to challenge them with material that represents capitalism, and individual strength against the collective.
Playing such a game does not call for handshakes or tip-toeing around the issue. I can declare that I won’t do it anymore. Playing nice with those collective advocates isn’t going to happen on my end of the deal ever again. And I’m not alone in this stance. Increasingly over the last year it has been understood that collectivists do not deserve compassion, they do not deserve understanding, because they truly want to destroy the version of America that we love, so the gloves are coming off. To get a sense of this all one has to do is look at the way John Aglialoro has approached the release of Atlas Shrugged Part One as opposed to Atlas Shrugged Part Two. In Part One he had a big opening and invited Hollywood to view the film along with other media professionals and they did exactly what Ellsworth Toohey did in The Fountainhead, which was attempt to crush Atlas Shrugged Part One because they didn’t like the message, because they wanted to suppress it in favor of collectivist oriented entertainment, which has had a monopoly for a long time in America—too long. Aglialoro’s trust in the media business to treat him fairly cost him dearly, millions of dollars of lost box office receipts because the system shut down access to the film. Later, once Part One hit Netflix and came out on DVD, people rented it, and watched it, and enjoyed it, once the media hype had died down.
This time, for Part Two, it’s a whole different story. Aglialoro and his team prior to the October 12th release of Atlas Shrugged ‘Ether Or’ have had a premier in Washington D.C. and two screenings in Los Angeles, and not a single member of the traditional press was invited. Aglialoro said of the decision, “They won’t like it, so why give them the sword to cut off our own head.” His approach was to invite those they know are with them to see and write about the film leaving the media out of the loop. More or less, the Atlas Shrugged film group is by-passing the traditional media, the studio system, all the channels who control the flow of information, and they are well aware that it will ruffle feathers, which is the point when you’re at war. John Aglialoro, when talking about the media’s response to Part I said, “The movie critics en masse immaturely bullied Atlas Shrugged mercilessly. Not because the cast or producers made a technically or artistically inferior movie, but because of its philosophical message of individualism. That’s what’s unforgivable. The critics prostituted their profession for politics.” Ahhh, it’s so nice to hear someone else say that, to have the balls to put his personal fortune on the line to make a film the establishment will absolutely hate while he is hanging by a thread at great personal risk to himself, he tells the media that they “prostituted themselves.” That’s the measure of a man, and the new way that the battles will be fought for now on in this war of ideas.
So understand that we are at war, and what’s at stake is freedom over collectivism, and money is the ballot box. This is why I am so intent to see Atlas Shrugged Part II successful, because in this kind of war I am the media. So are you dear reader, because you can’t trust the traditional sources on this matter. They support only one kind of idea, and that is the one advocated by collectivism, which is a crime against truth. If the ideas of collectivism were so strong, they would not fear competition from the theories of individual liberty and laissez-faire capitalism over the crony capitalism of a mixed economy. But they do fear it, and wish with all their power to shut down the message. I plan to use the literature that gained traction in the past to pound my wishes into the future, and I plan also to add to it with new work for future generations. But surrendering life to the quicksand of the collective is simply not an option. Peace with the collectivist is not desired. Their way of life can only be cast away from the continent of The United States because they have proven a desire to rule with a dictatorship of the proletariat, and the damage they have done to millions of people and the human race in general has been, and is unforgivable. Much harsher language will come in the days that have not yet seen the sun. That is a promise.
In the meantime, prepare to see Atlas Shrugged Part 2 at a theater near you on the weekend of October 12th. Go see the movie for no other reason than to stick a fork in the eye of those who have embraced collectivism at the expense of personal freedom.
Rich Hoffman
If you like my work at this site then check out my books shown below, along with quotes, interviews, reviews, and ways to find them. Clicking the pictures below are your doors to even more adventure:
Stunning is the best way to describe Ayn Rand’s classic novel, We The Living. Absolutely stunning! I feel upon completing that novel similar to what I felt when I finished Allen Eckert’s novel The Frontiersman—by asking the question, “why hasn’t this book been read by every single eighth grader in America?” Because We The Living should be read by every single person who either calls themselves Americans, or wants to become one. The book is absolutely knock-your-socks-off—stunning. The entire time I was reading the book, I kept thinking back to my teenage years when the restaurant chain Wendy’s used to air commercials like the one shown below at the height of the Cold War during President Reagan’s time in the Oval Office.
I used to think that commercial was a gross exaggeration of what life in the Soviet Union was really like. I thought it was just propaganda designed to steer people away from communism and toward capitalism. But I now know because I read We The Living, that life in the Soviet Union was about 20 times worse than what was shown in that old Wendy’s commercial and I am literally stunned that academia in The United States embraced communism to the high level that they have, because We The Living takes readers on a very intimate journey into the lives of many characters who are struggling to live under the Dictatorship of the Proletariat brought about by the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917.
I suppose I have to thank John Aglialoro who is the financial mind behind making Ayn Rand’s classic book Atlas Shrugged into a movie. It was because of the upcoming Atlas Shrugged Part II film that I picked up We The Living to enjoy while I waited for the movie to come out. I waited so I could celebrate Ayn Rand in the weeks leading up to the film’s release with a book that I hadn’t read by her. If not for the Atlas Shrugged movies I may never have picked up We The Living because honestly I have had no desire to read about life in Russia, even though I have always been curious about it. When I think of Russia I think of snow and communism, neither of which I am particularly fond of. I like snow a little bit, but I absolutely despise communism. Collectivism for me has always been a dirty word, well before I ever bumped into Ayn Rand’s work. I feel that way to such a degree that I don’t even let people call me, “brother,” including when I was a part of a large motorcycle group in Ohio. I withdrew as Vice-President of that group because I recognized the collectivism in the bikers as I was making a documentary of how motorcycle riders were, so “independent.” I abandoned the documentary when I acknowledged that most bikers were behaving with collectivism down to the simple process of riding in formation behind a pack leader on the highway which to me was unacceptable. As I delved into the Easy Rider Chillicothe Rodeo and learned that public displays of sexual intercourse and drunkenness were important parts of the culture, I felt so disenfranchised that along with college fraternities, athletic institutions, academic politics and labor unions determined collectivism was a rampant problem that threatened the sanctity of The United States by intending to crush individual identity.
Today Ayn Rand is so hated, so despised by all the members of groups like the ones mentioned because her opinions threaten their existence. Yet the truth is the truth. It cannot be escaped. The hatred for Ayn Rand will be on full display once again when John Aglialoro, Harmon Kaslow and the rest of the Atlas Shrugged film team release ‘Either Or,’ (Part II of the Atlas Shrugged trilogy) on October 12th. Fans will love the movie. Collectivists, democrats, progressives, communists, intelligentsia, hippies, welfare recipients, neurotic parents, bleeding heart liberals, tree hugging green tech advocates, most of the viewership of Comedy Central, MTV, and fans of daytime soap operas will hate the movie. In fact if forced to watch the film they will wither about as though Holy Water had been cast upon their foreheads during a Catholic exorcism ritual inciting demons to flee from their bodies when Atlas Shrugged Part II hits screens in spite of all their efforts to keep the world from reading Ayn Rand or seeing a movie adaptation of her literary work. The question then comes to pass, why is she so hated? If so many people think one way, and only a few think the way she did—in a democracy—aren’t the majority entitled to rule over the majority? The answer is———a resounding——NO!
To understand who Ayn Rand was and how she thought, reading her book We The Living is absolutely essential. I can understand why Rand’s later characters are so hated by collectivists. John Galt and Howard Roark were the way they were in Rand’s later literary work because it was revealed in We The Living the true relationship that Ayn Rand had with her very first love as a 17-year-old teenager in a man named Leo. Leo in the book We The Living was trying to live a good life under a Soviet system that absolutely would not allow for such people to exist, and all during the book I kept thinking that life in America is not very much different. The heroine of We The Living is Kira Argounov which is the literal antithesis of Ayn Rand herself living in Petrograd in the year of 1924 trying to start a life with the man she loved, which was impossible without allowing her personal identity to be smashed into collective soup.
We The Living was the first time I had ever gained intimate knowledge of what life was like behind the Iron Curtain. This was my first realistic glance at what went on behind the Berlin Wall, and why people risked life and limb to climb over, to get away from the oppressive, Soviet dominated East Germany. We The Living takes readers on a journey into the bread lines at the co-operatives, into the minds of the communists ruling as Karl Marx’s proletariat, into the minds of the bourgeois, into their education system, into their economic engine, into their whole philosophy. The genius of the book is in how effectively the characters are developed so that their demise into having their individuality stripped away completely is revealed from the years of 1924 to 1926. In just a few years, once proud families were stripped down to nothing, forced to live like insects in public housing seized by the state, and begging for a job run by the state so they could receive a food ration card. The living conditions were absolutely appalling. The way the communists gained control of each and every person’s life in Russia was revealed in graphic detail and their motivations for doing so was also exposed. Many of those methods can be found in the modern United Nations Agenda 21 initiative, which was written by former fans of open communism, now calling themselves socialists and progressives.
For me the most heart-wrenching scene was when a young couple was thrown into Siberian jails because of their counter-revolutionary intentions against the great Dictatorship of the Proletariat. The couple simply wanted to eat, and because they didn’t belong to any of the trade unions, they couldn’t get a job, and therefore couldn’t get a food ration card. So they plotted to overthrow the government by passing out flyers in factories urging people to stand up against the communists. They were sentenced to 10 years in Siberia at different prisons which they both knew was a death sentence because nobody came back from Siberia. They typically died from suicide or consumption, there just wasn’t any food in that frozen land but what was brought in by train. The couple rode for most of the trip together in a train holding each other as long as they could. Then at a particular train stop the woman was ripped from the arms of her man and put on another train to head to a different prison and that was the last they would ever see of each other ever. It was a terrible scene beautifully written. I often thought of Steven Spielberg’s Schindlers’ List during these kinds of scenes where the content was just terrible, but the delivery was magnificent.
The book is filled with scenes like that; all of them absolutely catastrophic. It is no wonder that it took three years to get published in the United States in 1936 and was rejected by a dozen publishing houses before Macmillan finally considered it over the violent protests of Granville Hicks, who would later get revenge on Ayn Rand through the New York Times when he was sought out by them to review Atlas Shrugged twenty years later. The owner of Macmillan overruled Hicks by saying “I don’t know whether the book will make any money, but that it was important and ought to be published.” Hicks was revealed to be a card-carrying member of Communist Party USA as was many members of the media, academia, and labor unions in the period of the 1920’s to the 1950’s. They were later forced to go underground into hiding behind the Democratic Party disguised as political progressives. And it was clear that the Soviet Union Dictatorship of the Proletariat planned for the entire world to be converted to communism. They had extremely elaborate plans to move their utopia of misery to every nation on earth, and many in the United States were willing to help them do it, because they didn’t see the real conditions of what the people in the Soviet Union were undergoing. All they saw was the idealistic utterances broadcast from Moscow through the G.P.U, and later the K.G.B.
During my reading of We The Living I kept thinking of modern life in America and how much communism has shaped the way many people think. I thought of the green movement, particularly the smart meters that are going onto all of our homes for all the reasons that the government in 1920 Russia controlled the food supply, so that the citizens would have to follow instructions in order to eat, and if they stepped out of line, the card would be taken, and the people would starve. This control was not taken over night, but gradually, over a ten-year period. The same thing has been going on here in The United States over the last thirty years. Government, which leans toward communism by its very nature, is gaining control of the food supply, and is placing a particular emphasis on power supply. If the government can control how much electricity flows into a home, they can control the behavior of the people who live in that home and this is how so many people in Russia allowed themselves to be ruled by a Dictatorship of the Proletariat, because their everyday lives were completely focused on just trying to eat. They didn’t have the time, or mind to question anything about freedom—because they were just trying to survive moment by moment, which was by design.
It would seem that a book written over 75 years ago would resemble very little of the modern world, but on virtually every page I read something that reminded me of what I read recently in my local newspaper, or heard from some politician declaring that the rich in America make too much money and that they should give some of it to the poor. That statement started in the Soviet Union in the opening days of communist rule chronicled so effectively in We The Living and we hear it today under labor unions, and politicians—particularly on the Democratic side. After reading We The Living it is not far-fetched at all to consider that communists would plot with great care to place a president into power like Obama. For those who have seen the movie Dreams of my Real Father, you know what I’m talking about. The communists have planned for such things as far back as the turn of the century. Progressives started in America what the communists did in Russia. The only difference was that America had a culture of independence that was difficult to overcome, and it would take a long time—but they were prepared to wait. In We The Living the communists spoke of Soviet education, which is alive and well in America right now. If you have a child in public school, they are getting that education right now. If you are going to college, or sending a child through college, then you already know the rest of the story. It is not by accident, it has all been on purpose. We The Living shows clearly what the plan has always been and we are living it today in 2012 what was planned with great detail in 1920 to implement.
If I hated communism before I read We The Living, I don’t think there are human words yet invented to describe the level I despise such a collective concept now. I liked Ayn Rand before I read We The Living, but now I think she may be the greatest author in the last 200 years. I think Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead are two of the greatest books not only in American literature, but in world literature, and yes that includes the great classics. I would say that We The Living is more important than The Diary of Anne Frank, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, or Life Among the Lowly by Harriet Beecher Stowe, Moby Dick by Herman Melville, or The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne. We The Living should be read by every single human being on planet earth.
We The Living is in its most simple form a skeleton key to understanding Ayn Rand. If only 50% of the book were true, which I think is closer to 80%, but even at fifty, Ayn Rand had great reason to hate communism and those who advocated it, which these days are a majority of the American population. Rand lost her first love to communism and she despises it for damn good reason. It destroyed everything she cared about. She was unique because she didn’t allow communism to crush her spirit the way it did so many of her friends and family. If she hadn’t gotten out of the country, she may have been crushed within a year or two of 1926 when a guest at a party she attended in Russia found out she was leaving The Soviet Union and asked her to get the message out of what was happening behind the Iron Curtain. “When you get there, tell them Russia is a huge cemetery and that we are all dying. Tell them We The Living told them.” Ayn Rand kept her promise and wrote We The Living which was criticized, and shut down in the United States for nearly 25 years. It was only after the success of Atlas Shrugged in 1957 that Random House finally re-released it to the public. Today We The Living is enjoying a renewed interest almost 80 years after its publication in large part because John Aglialoro, and Harmon Kaslow are making a modern movie of Ayn Rand’s work Atlas Shrugged and curious minds like mine are reading We The Living because we want more of what Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead offered. It is too bad that the new interest didn’t happen 60 years ago, otherwise America might avoid the pain and suffering it is about to go through. So when the bad reviews for Atlas Shrugged Part II come out, it is for all the reasons told above and more, not because the film is bad. Communist sympathizers, which extend from Barack Obama and Joe Biden all the way down to the local unionized firehouse and FOP station, do sympathize with communism. Anyone who preaches the message of the proletariat (middleclass) advocates communism and that message is no clearer upon the world stage than in the book We The Living.
We The Living is a must read. If you have not read it then you must do so as soon as possible. I would recommend closing this site right now and going over to Amazon.com and buying We The Living right now! Don’t rent any movies, don’t go to any public meetings, don’t watch any sporting events until you have read this book and understand that the communism of that book is as real today as it was then. IT IS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW IN AMERICA FOR GOD’S SAKE, and Ayn Rand was trying to warn the world, and they didn’t listen, because the communists were already in place the way the party began to come into power in 1915 in Russia, when the world thought the Bolsheviks were “small potatoes.” It is not an overstatement to say that this is an emergency. It might have taken nearly 80 years to get the message out, but don’t let it become 81 or 82 years. Get the message today so you can act tomorrow, because you have to know who and what you’re fighting. In America we let the communists change the names of what they are without calling them on it, and we are paying for it dearly. 12 years of the Bush presidents, 8 years of Clinton, and now 4 years of Obama have delivered America to the doors of communism as it was established as a world revolution in Petrograd–1924 after the revolution of 1917. And it took one little woman out of the millions trapped in that country of collectivism to escape and report to the world what was happening, and that the wave was about to hit them too. That warning came in her book We The Living, but people didn’t listen. So she knew that she had to provide a blueprint for how to rebuild society after communism collapsed it. That is why she wrote The Fountainhead, and Atlas Shrugged, so people could see for themselves how things “should” be, since they were unable to act based on what “was” happening. We The Living is just a stunning portrayal of life in the Soviet Union and a vision of what intelligentsia has in mind for America, and provides the evidence to even the dullest minds what the intent has always been. It is a book that must be read, must be understood, and must be communicated to every friend, family member and loved one. It is in my mind the most crucial, historical novel of our time, not because its content is uplifting, but because it’s all too real.
Rich Hoffman
If you like my work at this site then check out my books shown below, along with quotes, interviews, reviews, and ways to find them. Clicking the pictures below are your doors to even more adventure:
The question that everyone is asking no matter what side of the political aisle they find themselves on is Who is John Galt, because of the new controversial film Atlas Shrugged Part II. The answer is that John Galt is a superhero to the productive intellectuals who have for many years enjoyed other superheroes such as Batman, Superman, Indiana Jones, Luke Skywalker, Spiderman and many others without having a specific hero rooted in reality that articulates their views. John Galt is a superhero because without weapons, special powers, or any interplanetary aid he holds within him the ability to save the world. He is able to do this with the personal realization that he alone is responsible for his own life, and due to that reality he is able to unleash tremendous creative potential that others benefit from. Through his life, the level of creative potential that is sapped off of humanity through collective philosophies is increasingly evident. John Galt with only his independence and his intellect is able to unlock a treacherous secret that has befuddled humanity since its inception, the tendency to revert philosophically backwards after great technological breakthroughs had been achieved. John Galt is the ultimate superhero because it is his intellect that crushes his enemies without ever declaring war, but by simply preventing them from robbing his merit in life, to sustain themselves.
The controversy over John Galt however is that his enemies are unfortunately all too real in the day to day lives of the modern world. When people proclaim that “They are John Galt” they are declaring their right to their own minds, their own creative potential, their own lives independent of the collective whole of society. By doing this they actually strengthen civilization in ways that humanity has never before realized, because the act of such a proclamation places the responsibility of living squarely on the shoulders of those doing the act and not allowing collective bodies of society to hide the faults of their unproductive lives. John Galt is the creative force that breaks through the unspoken barrier which restricts the intellectual producers who for so long been ridiculed as “greedy,” “selfish,” “right-winged,” “bourgeois” and “upper class.”
This whole idea of John Galt as a superhero of course infuriates all the advocates of collectivism. Unlike the traditional superheroes mentioned above who have villains using diabolical powers in an attempt to take over the world, the villains of John Galt could be the next door neighbor who roams around the neighborhood collecting fees for their homeowners association proclaiming that a homeowner is in violation of the rules because their garage door is open. The enemy could also be the school levy advocate who demands higher taxes on a community so their child can have a free education but in doing so they feed a tyrannical labor union advocating socialist teachings to the children and society at large. Or perhaps the villain is a family member who wants to know why their loved one dropped out of college to pursue an entrepreneurial enterprise instead of brown-nosing alums for a future job in a future office cubical of no real productive worth. The villains of Atlas Shrugged are too real for the masses that live their lives through collectivism and they often feel guilty upon reading Atlas Shrugged the classic novel, or watching the films that are currently being released. So their reaction to the material is anger, and castigation.
The collectivists deep in their minds, because they have not done as John Galt has–and that’s take personal responsibility for the quality of their lives, feels deep guilt when they realize how much they rely on other people. They lack the courage to face the trials and tribulations of daily life alone, and this makes them a burden on the intellectual producers who create all the jobs in society, and drive all the materials that produce the best culture. They hide their personal fears behind collectivism and mental evasion. The message of the superhero John Galt is one that personally calls collectivists out and puts the light on their behavior, which goes against the entire reason they built their lives around collectivism in the first place. When Galt declares at the end of the Atlas Shrugged, to “get out of my way,” he is saying that he does not need anybody, that he alone has the ability to do the job at hand if only the parasites of intellectual ineptitude would get out of his way and allow him to live to his full potential.
To understand what Galt is talking about, the best comparison would be to consider three hikers who are backpacking 10 miles into the rugged mountains of West Virginia. Everything the backpackers need would have to be placed inside the backpacks for the week that they would remain in the mountains. Each backpack would weight between 20 to 40 pounds. Metaphorically speaking John Galt is one of the backpackers and before starting out, he volunteers to carry the tent for all three hikers because he is stronger than the other two. They resent the fact silently that Galt thinks he is stronger than they are, but they say nothing because they don’t want the extra weight on their own backs.
Two miles into the hike one of the two weaker backpackers complains that they don’t think they can keep pace with Galt because he is going too fast for them. They ask Galt to slow down so they can keep up. This forces Galt to walk slower to appease the weaker hiker. Another two miles into the hike the other hiker complains that the straps on their backpack are hurting their shoulders. They have incorrectly packed their equipment putting not enough weight on the hips, leaving most of the heavy lifting done incorrectly by the shoulders. John Galt then volunteers to take away some of the weight and carry it himself to relieve the pressure on the fatigued hiker. Another two miles in both of the weaker hikers complain that Galt’s pace is too brisk, that they need to stop and rest once in a while to catch their breath. Of course this irritates Galt. The weak hikers tell Galt that if he has so much energy then why doesn’t he carry the weight of both their packs so that they can keep up with Galt, then they wouldn’t have to stop so much over the next four miles. They rationalize that each according to his ability each according to their need, that Galt has an obligation to take away their burden since they are not as strong as he is. Galt then tells them that they will never become strong themselves if they don’t learn to carry their own weight, and to fight through their struggles for their own good and benefit. But this sounds too hard to the two weak hikers, so Galt in frustration throws off all the extra weight he had been carrying and proceeds on without them.
As the sun sets much later that day after 10 more breaks from the two weak hikers they arrive at the camp that John Galt has already set up. They discover that Galt had arrived 6 hours earlier, had pitched the tent, found enough wood to build a fire, start a fire, begin cooking dinner, and read two chapters of a book he had been studying. Galt well rested and content could only manage a smug wave at the two weak hikers as they staggered into camp sweating profusely, overcome by exhaustion. The hikers demand of Galt water since they had depleted the contents of their canteens. Galt points to the creek that runs alongside the camp, as if the solution should be self evident, yet the tired hikers complain that they are too tired to filter the water for themselves and they complain that Galt is so selfish for not spending his extra time filling jugs of water for them since he obviously had time instead of wasting his time reading a book.
For those who are the intellectual producers, not the parasitic intellectuals that we find in our public schools and colleges, but the actual producers of society—John Galt is their superhero–their kind of representative in the art of literature and now motion pictures. Of course for the two hikers and the others who think like them John Galt is a terrible person who has treated them unfairly because he thinks his “shit doesn’t stink,” that he “considers himself superior.” They find the message of John Galt appalling, because John Galt makes them realize what burdens they truly are, and how parasitic they are to the creative minds of existence. Those who hate Atlas Shrugged with great passion are no different than the two hikers who wanted Galt to carry all their equipment for them, to move through the hike at their pace, so that they could believe they are equal to John Galt as they would all arrive at the camp at the same time. Since they outnumbered Galt two to one, they believed they held the majority of opinion which compelled Galt to carry their gear and make them feel included in the successful experience of a hike into the mountains, instead of a couple of weaklings who packed too heavy, were not determined to carry their own weight, and showed no interest in arriving at camp in good time so they could fill their minds with the contents of a good book in the rustic mountain setting, as was Galt’s goal.
The name of John Galt does incite anger among those who know they are parasites to creativity and if a genie could grant these people three wishes of anything in the world that they could want or desire, they would spend all three continuing the illusion that collectivism works so that they could hide their true worth from the eyes of the true producers—the intellectual producers of individualism. The reason is that no amount of money can hide the value of these people. These types could be given $10 million dollars and within 5 years they would have spent every bit of it on women, homes, boats, cars, and charity because their minds are not equipped to think on their own, they are the weak hikers of our lives and will not be able to carry their own load through the mountains of West Virginia even with the help of money, because they lack the intellectual capacity to do so.
What the two hikers, and all the people who hate John Galt, Ayn Rand, or the great book Atlas Shrugged fail to realize is that their lives were enhanced greatly because Galt made them carry their own load up the mountain, that he did not deny them the experience of the merit of their labor. Because deep down inside, as does every intellectual producer, they all know that in the next morning when the sun rises that the weak hikers will be sore to their bones, but the water they scoop out of the stream will taste so good, because they earned it, and it wasn’t given to them. People like John Galt live every day in this fashion, so when they declare “I am John Galt,” they are saying they understand what John Galt is, what he represents, and why he is important.
In the reality of the real world, this is why John Galt is considered a superhero, because it takes superhuman strength to resist the temptation of succumbing to the weak hikers of the world, to the parasitic collectivists, and help them when they cry and beg for it. It takes superhuman strength to know, over their protests, that if collectivists are forced to carry their own weight, that they will be better people for it and that by helping them, you actually hurt them more than their little minds can fathom. It takes superhuman strength to resist the comfortable blanket of collectivism when the entire world advocates it, except for those few who understand fully who John Galt is, and why he’s so important.
So the answer to “Who is John Galt” is known easily to those who are intellectual producers. The answer will infuriate those who are not intellectual producers, but John Galt is not a superhero for those types of minds. He is not interested in the collective acceptance of their opinions. He is a superhero functioning from an inner strength that is completely foreign to them, John Galt knows that the way he can help the world best is by dropping the extra gear he’s carrying on their behalf and moving ahead at his own pace so they can benefit when they finally arrive to where he is mentally, and enjoy the experience of the camp site he has already built. By dropping their gear, the metaphorical John Galt can provide them with a nice tent to lay in to rest their bones, good food to eat which they didn’t have time to prepare on their own since it took them all day to hike up the mountain, and the inner victory of forcing them to hike the mountain on their own, in their own time without robbing from them the wonder of a drink of water of which they fully earned through the struggle of their labor. It takes a real superhero to do all of that and know inwardly that it was the correct thing to do when the only thing the hikers could say in kindness to him was a complaint at having to get their own water when they first came into camp exhausted.
John Galt is a modern answer to the welfare culture that has allowed politics to rob from them the benefit of living their lives. John Galt is a superhero in a culture of collectivists who wish that John Galt would just carry their gear up the mountain so they can pretend they are also intellectual producers who are important to the world. That they can also climb up the mountains of life and arrive at camp at the same time as John Galt. Only their strategy is to hold the John Galts of life back from arriving too early so the complacency of their existence is not shown in the light of their lives. Rather than struggle to become more like John Galt, and the other intellectual producers who know and love the message of the superhero John Galt, they instead complain that their water should have been given to them upon arrival, and that Galt was a selfish, mean man who forced them to toil needlessly out of pure spite.
That’s when John Galt, the superhero did the unthinkable, the most courageous thing a man in his position could do—he encouraged the men and women who thought like he did to drop the gear of society and to stop carrying them on their backs, and show the world where they were wrong in their subscriptions to collectivism. It truly takes superhuman strength to say NO, but in John Galt’s case, and increasingly more intellectual producers are beginning to acknowledge in spite of the howls of protest, they are beginning to say NO too, to the collectivist who require the work and effort of the “producers” without being able to contribute equally the other way with the efforts of their own lives. Without John Galt’s refusal to say NO to the looters in his own life, the parasitic nature of those in a collective society never are addressed, and society arrives late to it’s destination of achievement, which is a crime against everything that breaths. John Galt is a superhero because this is the crime he fights, the one where collectivists become parasites on the fate of the human race and hold it back only so their feelings aren’t hurt with the realization that they are not like John Galt, but are the un-intentional enemies to his very existence.
Who is John Galt? He is everyone who realizes that they are the intellectual producers who make the world move. They are the creators of the world’s campsites. It is through them and by them that everything happens. And it is they who have to help everyone become better by forcing them to carry the weight of their own life, keeping them from the slavery of their own philosophy, because the waters of life taste best when it is earned through the effort of one’s own existence and not the unspoken debt to another human being.
Rich Hoffman
If you like my work at this site then check out my books shown below, along with quotes, interviews, reviews, and ways to find them. Clicking the pictures below are your doors to even more adventure:
In case you haven’t heard by now, teacher’s unions all across the nation are in an absolute conniption fit over the release of the new film Won’t Back Down directed by Daniel Barnz and staring Viola Davis, with Maggie Gyllenhall as parents and teachers who stand up to an evil, vile, and selfish teacher’s union. The union is run by Evelyn Riske, played by Holly Hunter—the union president of a failing Pittsburg school. Teacher unions took to the streets at a premier of the film declaring that the movie is a “corporate” attack on the fundamental worker rights in America, which from the union standpoint is to fight for a living wage by running a massive government monopoly that directly extorts tax money from the public using children as the manipulated bargaining chip. The Blaze recently did an article on this subject over a specific protest that occurred a week before the film’s release on September 28, 2012.
If you belong to a trade union public or private, you are a part of an organization that has its roots in communism. The history is irrefutable. I have covered this topic in greater detail in many other articles especially the one from yesterday. CLICK HERE TO REVIEW. There is no reason to play patty cake with the issue any longer, we must call them what they are. Unions = communism. End of story! Liberal advocates no longer call it communism in the United States, they call it progressivism. In Europe, because communism started there and they are not protected by The Declaration of Independence or The Constitution they call it by the name of socialism, communism “light.” For instance, France just elected a socialist president who immediately declared that the bourgeoisie pay their fair share of taxes, up to 75% of their income, as determined by the preliterate of democracy. Unions in America are functioning from this core idea which was founded in communism, the idea that the bourgeoisie must surrender their assets to the proletariat (the working class) all in the name of fairness.
But in America with the exception of labor unions, the people reject such ideas unless it is disguised to trick them. Many union members, particularly cops and firefighters believe they are flag waving patriots when in fact they are communist advocates through their IFA memberships because they play Xbox all day at the firehouse instead of reading books about history. They don’t want to think such things because they are paid well; it’s an inconvenient bit of information that is a reality nobody wants to consider. So they get mad at those who point out the truth. If you support organized labor, you support communism, because they have the same ideas about how the world works.
The unions have pushed for years communist ideas about how business should be entangled with a community embedded with powerful unions who support progressive/communist causes. I have personally tried to work with my local school to bring their costs down through my school board, and they have clearly sided with the powerful teachers union, and no matter how many elections we had, or how much public debate we engaged in, the school board refused to budge off their defense of their teachers union. Protecting the teacher’s union are hoards of immature, neurotic parents just a few short years out of their post partum chemical fluctuations who are a terribly insecure lot of humans. They want what’s best for their children of course and they allow emotion to dictate their political actions. When the union members tell mothers at a PTA meeting that their child needs a socialized teacher with a Master’s Degree in education to teach the children about “global awareness,” the parents don’t question the information at all. The PTA parents just repeat like a parrot what the union tells them. I have tried to deal with those types of people reasonably, but they don’t listen—they just behave like mindless robots what the radical unions tell them to utter and I am personally done trying to reason with them. For an example of the type of person I’m talking about check out the former PTA mom who wrote her opinion of the movie Won’t Back Down at the link below.
My current opinion about teacher’s unions in government schools is that they should be eradicated completely. They have no right, or no place embedding themselves into our children, or the tax money of our communities. Until teacher unions are removed from public education, our society will continue to be under-educated, education will be too expensive, and education will never improve because unions will not allow ANY reforms. For the most recent proof, all one need do is look at what the Chicago Teacher’s Union did to the government of Chicago. Those teachers of socialist and outright communist supporters didn’t give a damn about the kids or their parents who had a schools shut down because of the very greedy labor strike. The proof is in the actions.
The union protestors at the showings of Won’t Back Down are upset that a movie is being done that exposes them for what they really are. They will call it propaganda, but what is it that “they” do when they use our children and the fates of their futures to sell communism to a public too busy and too shallow to know any better? Won’t Back Down doesn’t have a social obligation to show a bunch of teachers sitting down with parents to collectively discuss anything, as the PTA mom in the article above wished for. Won’t Back Down is not about pandering to the political left, it is about going after the money that is left on the table in Hollywood by giving people on the political right the kind of movie they want to see. What the teacher’s unions and other communist advocates who have captured the message in Hollywood are afraid of is that this film Won’t Back Down is not the only film being released out of the film industry that is going after the money left by producers who have for years made movies only for the political left, with the intention of converting those otherwise conservative minds to a message that runs counter to their logic. Atlas Shrugged Part II is coming out in a couple of weeks, and the very popular film 2016: Obama’s America has done wonderful box office numbers on track with Michael Moore’s socialist propaganda films of the last 20 years. All those films have a conservative message intended for the conservative movie ticket buyer who has been left out of the entertainment business for nearly 40 years.
When people wonder why Obama is so high in the polls, it’s not because he has a superior message. It’s because his political party rooted in communism has captured the thoughts and minds of America through Hollywood, so that only one side of the story—the sensitive plight of the proletariat worker being exploited by the evil bourgeoisie–was told time and time, and time again. Films and books that offer other viewpoints have been crushed out of existence by an aggressive Screen Actors Guild Union who takes up the same positions in the movie business as the teacher’s unions do. And if the SAG Union doesn’t do the trick then the Writer’s Guild of America will. Believe me, I know from personal experience. I’d rather walk from a deal with the rights to my story intact than to join a union, not because of the people involved, but because of the process that it takes to sell the story under the union rules. They are all on the same team and they all have their roots in communism, which I personally despise and I despise progressives even more for attempting to hide the truth of what they are by changing their name. They are even worse.
The protests against the film Won’t Back Down is not because the movie represents the views of Rupert Murdoch, Fox News, or any other corporate interest. The protests are over discouraging other filmmakers from exploring these topics so the unions can continue to control the message they are advocating which is the bourgeoisie class is against the proletariat as Karl Marx outlined it in his book The Communist Manifesto. In America, at least half the country has rejected that message, and filmmakers are beginning to see that there is a lot of money to be made by making films for those people. That is why Won’t Back Down was made, and why it will do good business. And behind it are a bunch of other films with conservative messages that are on the tables of producers’ desks waiting for the box office numbers to come in off these conservative films being released in the third and fourth business quarters of the Hollywood product. The unions are hoping those will come out flat, so they are protesting in an effort to keep people from going to the movies because they know their futures depend on keeping people in the dark as to their real intentions.
So if you want to see the public unions out of your life as much as I do, you’ll go see this movie not just once. I would encourage you dear reader to vote with your wallet and give Won’t Back Down your weekend business. There would be nothing better than to hear the complaints coming from the bell bottomed, cackling hens on Monday in the teacher’s unions crying over the success Won’t Back Down has had at the box office. Because the writing is on the wall, and things will change, so long as movies like this one continue to get made to be released in an effort at competing with all the George Clooney/Sean Penn socialist propaganda films that are being made in Hollywood with a message that reflects more accurately the beliefs of the entire country instead of just New York City and California.
Rich Hoffman
If you like my work at this site then check out my new book Tail of the Dragon along with quotes, interviews, reviews, and ways to find one at:
It took a few weeks after the initial release of my new novel to get the sales links up for Tail of the Dragon at Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.com, but they are now up, and slowly reviews are beginning to come in from people who have bought and read the book. I do a lot of work here at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom that I do out of a love of independence and because it’s the fight of our day—and I charge nothing for the service. I do it because I want to, and because I know people want, and need the information. But it makes me feel very good when I learn that people thank me for my work by purchasing one of my novels because it tells me that the people who read here value my efforts and they wish to back it the way we determine value in our society—with financial support.
More than money though comes comments like the very first one that went up on the new Amazon link. I was delighted to read that someone picked up Tail of the Dragon and read it, and understood exactly what I was trying to accomplish as a writer, and wrote a review that invoked much passion. Upon reading the comment, I did not expect such articulation, and it means a lot to me to see such words composed on behalf of Tail of the Dragon.
While it’s true that I wrote Tail of the Dragon to be a good ol’ throw back to the fun car chase stories out of the 1970’s, intended to appeal to anyone who played with Hot Wheels cars as a kid—both men and women—I always write with an extra layer of meaning for those who wish to look with deeper eyes. For those who don’t I would say that Tail of the Dragon is a very entertaining work that demands a second read just because the pace of the novel is very fast, and very intense, which is very much on purpose. But I personally enjoy the added layers of meaning in anything I read or write. I always look deeply into every subject, even if it means walking across the street. So it gives me great pleasure to see that one of the first readers who bought Tail of the Dragon off Amazon was able to see the added meanings that I placed within the storyline.
Even better is that the review appears to be from a woman, which gives me great hope that the audience for Tail of the Dragon will be diverse and not gender specific, which has always been my hope. Women typically aren’t interested in car crashes and high speed, mountainous roadways, but they are interested in the kind of men who are. The plot of Tail of the Dragon explores the reason, and that insight was not lost on the reviewer, which for me is the highest compliment. The review can be seen below:
“I just finished this book this morning and it evoked such feeling that I wrote this review immediately. This book speaks to what the “American Spirit” is. It’s not tangible or even fully describable, but we all know it when we see it. I think most of the people in this country have become scared and miserable because we suppress it. We are so worried about offending someone or becoming socially exiled that we fight against the light that shines within. We turn that light off so that we can conform and become socially acceptable to the masses. What is lost in this is our individual greatness. This greatness in each of us is what has fueled American ingenuity and progress throughout history. It created American exceptionalism. Now, we are all expected to be equal. No one is better than anyone else. We are all supposed to take our place and shut our mouths. It is this mentality that will put out the American fire. The fact is that we are NOT all equal. Some people ARE better than others. And that is okay. This is what makes us great. By attempting to level the playing field and give every person an equal chance, we bring down those who are great. The sky is no longer the limit and we all fail equally together. What Rich Hoffman has done in this book is materialize in fictional characters what all Americans, whether they admit it or not, wish they could do; throw caution to the wind and “flip the bird” at the proverbial “man.” His characters speak true to the corrupt collaborative nature of today’s politics and offers a view into how the tides could change if we defy today’s culture. Bravo and well done!”
The link to the Amazon site and the original review is:
Comments like that make all the hours and thought that go into a novel worth the time and effort. If a hundred people told me that they didn’t like the novel, it would not matter because I know that there are people like that reviewer out there in the world who can read a book like Tail of the Dragon and see clearly the emotions it evokes, and that gives me great hope for the human race.
It is not good to always do what one tells you to do. It is good and healthy to thumb your nose at the law from time to time. It is healthy to worry first about the contents of your spousal relationships and not give a damn what societies opinion is of it. Those and many more are the types of themes explore in Tail of the Dragon and while I explore many factual diatribes here at the OW just learning facts and figures won’t help alter the course of the human race, which is needed due to the problems of the day.
What is needed is a focus on stories that powerfully exhibit individuality over collectivism, because the human race must relearn the art of independence. And it is the task of the artists to provide content that starts the thought process in that direction. As a writer to receive a review like the first one at Amazon.com it means more to me than any amount of sales receipts, because it tells me that one person in a large ocean of curious minds understood my deeper meanings set against a middle-aged couple in a fixed up old Firebird running for their lives not from the law, but toward freedom at any and all costs.
Thank you!
I learned recently that Amazon.com will not allow comments unless a recent purchase has been made from their website. Not sure why they do that, but that’s the policy they are working under. If you dear reader have read Tail of the Dragon and would like to leave a review, and find you are having a hard time at the Amazon site, it is because of this policy. However, Barnes and Noble.com does not have such a policy, and your comments would be greatly appreciated. You can find the comment section of Tail of the Dragon at the Barnes and Noble link below:
Harmon Kaslow is one of the most passionate movie producers I have ever worked around.That was the only conclusion I could make after we parted ways in front of the Hyatt Regency in downtown Cincinnati where he finally went back to his room after a very long day. Kaslow was at the Duke Energy Center promoting Atlas Shrugged Part II speaking with Glenn Beck, Matt Kibbe and a long list of freedom fighters who spoke during FreePac to a very large crowd that packed the floor with thousands upon thousands of people hungry to see what they could do to make The United States a better country to live in. In the video below Kaslow personally greeted hundreds of attendees after his dramatic presentation on stage, as I along with a team of helpers worked the Atlas Shrugged booth passing out over 5000 t-shirts announcing the release date of Atlas Shrugged Part II.
I was there to help promote the next movie edition of Atlas Shrugged in a similar fashion that I did with Part I only there were not huge forums like FreePac two years ago when that first real film translation of Ayn Rand’s epic novel was released to theaters. CLICK HERE FOR A REVIEW. Things were harder then; John Aglialoro had the rights to the famous Ayn Rand masterpiece that happened to be the most influential novel in America and he wanted to make a film version of the massive book dividing it into three parts, just as they were presented by Ayn Rand. The material is extraordinarily difficult to put into a film version because much of the content is cerebral, so the difficulty in translating such heady material into a visual format proved elusive for the mainstream Hollywood community. The closest thing I have seen to Atlas Shrugged in a feature film is the recent Batman films by Christopher Nolan. But unlike Bruce Wayne from the Nolan trilogy, Atlas Shrugged does not have the benefit a superhuman powers, or cleaver gadgets to fight crime in the city of Gotham. The heroes of Atlas Shrugged are human beings who acknowledge their ability to be unique producers who support the entire world with their creative minds. The primary protagonist that was listed on the t-shirts we were handing out is John Galt, a man of such extraordinary brilliance that he is able to earn the respect of the worlds primary movers to go on strike against the looters of government who pretend to be at the center of everything—but are clearly lacking.
Atlas Shrugged does not have any literary problems. It is a standard unto itself. It may very well be the perfect novel. It is every bit as grand as any novel by Victor Hugo and is as stunning from a literary character development stand point as any novel ever written by any writer. But the deep social divide that comes out when the book or film is mentioned is that the villains of Atlas Shrugged are a bit too real. Members of modern governments and the general media recognize quickly that they cannot relate with John Galt, or Dagney Taggart, Henry Rearden, Hugh Akston, Francisco d’ Anconia, or my favorite character out of all of them Ragnar Danneskjöld—the pirate! Ragnar was a philosopher who became a privateer in the book. Alone he defied the might of the United States Navy and of all the People’s Navies of the world to be, as he famously said, “the friend of the friendless.” Atlas Shrugged does not dress it’s villains up in costumes like Darth Vader in Star Wars, or the Joker in Batman to allow the reader or movie viewer the courtesy of psychological distance. The villains are a too real for many guilty of similar real life acts to fathom, so they of course reject the material of Ayn Rand. Much of the negative criticism that comes from critics, beltway politicians and social looters emerges in defense of their own tendencies to be parasites upon society. These elements make Atlas Shrugged a divisive story that does not spare punches. Written over 50 years ago it features a president that is just like the modern version of Barack Obama. Atlas Shrugged came well before Barack Obama was even born, so the film can never be said to be taking shots at his presidency, or the kind of government he supports. But never-the-less, the policies of the Obama White House are remarkably similar to the policies of the villains in Atlas Shrugged, and the media who supports the President for all the wrong reasons.
All day long at FreePac as I personally handed out thousands of t-shirts people stood slack-jawed at the concept that we were giving them away for free. Many people wanted to give me money for them seeking to trade value for value in their minds with actual currency. If I wanted to I could have pocketed several thousand dollars because people wanted to give me twenty-dollar bills per shirt but I told each of them—“keep your money today, but spend it on an extra ticket for the movie, because the media who is currently functioning does not want you to see this movie. Barack Obama does not want you to see this movie. Mayor Bloomburg in New York does not want you to see this movie. No Democrat, many Republicans, and no head of any network want you to see this movie because they know they are the villains in it, and they don’t want that reality for themselves and they don’t want you to see them in the context presented in Atlas Shrugged, which is terribly realistic. They wish to continue to believe they are saving the world, when it is actually they who are destroying it. So take your twenty dollars and spend it at the box office on Atlas Shrugged Part II because it will need your support, because it won’t get it from the press.” I can think of seven times during my work in the Atlas Shrugged booth where tears streamed down the faces of people who gathered the impact of what I told them and they could only respond through broken gasps—“thank you.”
I warned everyone who took a t-shirt that the reviews for Atlas Shrugged Part II would not be favorable even though nobody has yet seen the movie. The reason for this trend was also covered by Ayn Rand not in Atlas Shrugged but by the juggernaut of novel which happens to be my favorite called The Fountainhead published in 1943. In that book it explains how members of the media align themselves with the politics of the day to help “shape” culture. I recently wrote an article about how this was attempted against the newest Batman film once the media realized that the Nolan brothers had written a story about anti-collectivism and not a troubling thriller featured around Heath Ledger’s Joker character.Dark Knight Rises in spite of the tragedy in Colorado upon its opening had gone on to do over $1 billion dollars in world-wide business so it has the support of the public in spite of how the press turned on it in midstream. The New Yorker led the way coming out against the film in an attempt to steer business away from the anti-collectivist message of Dark Knight Rises in the exact same way that characters from Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead attempted to do the same in that fictional tale. CLICK HERE TO REVIEW. The same thing will without question happen to Atlas Shrugged Part II. I told the people I handed shirts to that we needed them to wear the shirts around to their grocery stores, to their shopping complexes, to work whenever possible, to act as a walking billboard because the media machine will not do the film justice. By taking a t-shirt and wearing it proudly they could help make Atlas Shrugged Part II a success without the help of any media, any politician, or mainstream acceptance. I know very well the material of Atlas Shrugged and can report that it is much more powerful than Dark Knight Rises on a cerebral level, which is not intended to take anything away from that fantastic movie. But if Atlas Shrugged II could afford the media backing that Dark Knight Rises had where Warner Brothers put the film on over 3000 screens domestically and on additional screens all over the world, Atlas Shrugged Part II would do similar business. The problem is there is not a major studio behind Atlas Shrugged. It’s John Aglialoro, a few other financial backers, and Harmon Kaslow. To make Atlas Shrugged Part II it required a great deal of personal passion on the scale of the heroes in the novel Atlas Shrugged knowing every part of the process would be an uphill battle. For people like John Aglialoro and Harmon Kaslow making this film is equivalent to the scene that takes place in the actual movie of Part II when Henry Reardon is taken to court by the government for being “too good.” Those types of things do happen in real life and they happen often. So it is a miracle that this film actually got made.
Once Harmon finished his speech talking about Atlas Shrugged II and Glenn Beck finished up his speech, Kaslow came back out to the booth and helped us pass out the rest of the shirts as seen in the video above. After a long hard day he was still full of energy and boundless enthusiasm for his movie. He and I talked about the questions people had been asking me all day, primarily why the cast from the original film was not in this update. Many people discovered Ayn Rand for the first time though Part One which is available right now on Netflix, so naturally they are in love with the characters they came to know in that first installment. As Harmon explained, they had the opportunity to beef up their production value so they had to take the leap. He explained that the decision was hard but that Spiderman,Batman and many other superhero films had relied on the strength of the material instead of the character of the actors playing the part, so as a production they made the decision to take steps forward as they learned what worked best from their first film and expand on it. In essence Atlas Shrugged is a superhero story, and is every bit as fun and powerful as The Avengers, not on a physical level, but cerebrally. That is why the Atlas Shrugged booth all day long resembled more of an active booth at Comic Con than a political convention. The geeks in this case are not the kind of fans of The Incredible Hulk arguing over the Edward Norton version from past films or the new Mark Ruffalo version in The Avengers. These Atlas Shrugged geeks are fans of capitalism and the minds that drive it. They do tend to be smarter because they work to make themselves that way, and to see the emotion on their faces just to shake the hand of someone associated with the Atlas Shrugged production was wonderfully encouraging. Most of the day at FreePac I represented the face of the Atlas Production, and it was refreshing to see so much joy at getting a t-shirt advertising the movie and answering questions about the book and Ayn Rand in particular. I enjoyed watching people line up to have their picture taken next to Kaslow—just to be near a man who helped make Atlas Shrugged into a movie.
You know a man is authentic when the crowds are gone and the cameras are turned off, and they still espouse the same principles. As Harmon and I crossed Elm Street in Cincinnati he and I continued to talk without any pretense of selling the movie to a hungry public. We were just a couple of guys talking and I told him I admired him for taking such a shot with his movie. His efforts were tireless as he is about to go on a media rampage speaking on virtually every radio interview possible, TV spots also, and will shake tens of thousands of hands over the next two weeks. But like the characters from Atlas Shrugged I could see why John Aglialoro put so much of his own money on the production of the next Atlas film. It was the energy–the springy enthusiasm that Harmon Kaslow brought to the production that was making Atlas Shrugged possible. In a large part the thousands of new readers of Ayn Rand’s work were getting exposure to her novels because these movies Part One and now Part Two–because of the guy walking next to me along 5th Street about to leap into the Hyatt to rest from a hard day of marketing.
Two days prior to FreePac my wife and I spent 4 hours buying our stock of books for the week at Books-A-Million and Half Priced Books. I was happy to find a copy of Frazer’s The Golden Bough which I purchased along with a host of other choices and my wife had a stack up to her chin, as usual. But during our time in those two book stores I watched the staff set up a new display promoting all of Ayn Rand’s books in a special stand prominently featuring them with proud reverence—and people were buying them by the bucket. I personally watched that stand lose 50% of its stock in just a two-hour period and I knew it was because of the anticipation of Atlas Shrugged II about to hit more than 500 movie theaters. To find out if one is near you, or how to get one, CLICK HERE. The movie is a celebration of Ayn Rand’s work. If people want the full effect, they MUST read the book. But the movie will bring millions of new fans to the great and highly intelligent work of Atlas Shrugged. And to a large extent it is the tireless energy of Harmon Kaslow, the man shaking my hand for the 100th time in 2000 feet of walking that is the force able to take the movie from financing, to casting, to production, to wrap, and now to delivery standing up in front of thousands upon thousands of people to promote Atlas Shrugged. Like the character of John Galt, Dagney Taggart and Hank Reardon from Atlas Shrugged I thought of all three of them as Harmon gave me one last wave before the sliding glass door to the Hyatt opened as if to move hastily out of his way so not to be crushed by his boundless energy. Before he entered the doors to his hotel he proclaimed to me in a loud voice not caring who around us was listening, “I’m the luckiest guy in America, to be able to work on a picture like this!” Seeing him standing in the doorway of the Hyatt with his arms stretched out fearlessly reminded me of the ending of Shawshank Redemption. No question about it, completing Part II for him was redemption of a different nature, and most likely just as difficult. I continued to walk through the streets of Cincinnati thinking about that wave as minds half asleep with social evasion gathered in front of a closed Macy’s looking for something to do. It takes people like Harmon Kaslow to move the mountains of the world so that the sleepy minds of the ordinary can even have the opportunity to touch greatness for brief moments in their lives. And when Atlas Shrugged Part II opens, it is because of real life people like Kaslow and Aglialoro who haven’t quite given up on the world and retreated to their own versions of Atlantis that make it happen. They are still out fighting in the city streets of Cincinnati and residing in the Hyatt with a cell phone to their ear and an iPod in their hands answering email, setting up interviews, and plotting the next day’s activities in an effort to save the world by getting the people in it………to think.
Dark Knight Rises just opened in China and Italy which should be noted are communist and socialist countries, and as stated in my review, Christopher Nolan’s version of Batman is extremely pro-capitalist. I consider Dark Knight Rises to be a novel in film form that is almost as powerful as the work of Ayn Rand. So for China to even let a pro-capitalist oriented film be released in their country is a good sign of things to come, but especially this particular film, it is quite shocking to see that Dark Knight Rises made $31 million during it’s opening week. In Italy which is the size of most American states, the film earned $9.1 million. It was these numbers that pushed Dark Knight Rises up over the $1 billion dollar mark which is quite extraordinary considering the shooting incident in Aurora could have nudged Warner Brothers into a politically correct over-reaction tempting them to pull the film from theaters out of respect for the victims, for a later release date. The shooting did affect the opening box office numbers of Dark Knight Rises, and American audiences could have rejected the film because of the negative press surrounding the tragedy.
Speaking of nudging, in Cass Sunstein’s book Nudge, he addressed how government types can manipulate population patterns with suggestive influence and regulation. It is because of people like Sunstein who worked for the Obama White House as a regulation tsar that people like me think the Dark Knight Rises shooting in Aurora, Colorado was a “false flag” operation. For more on Sunstein and his book about using the power of government to “NUDGE” society into desired behavior patterns created by the political class read this New York Times article:
James Holmes shot up a theater dressed like “The Joker” at a midnight showing of the new Batman film on July 20th 2012 and miraculously seemed to have no background the press could dig into. Within weeks the story disappeared from the news cycle, even though it was a tremendous and sensational story. Oddly enough, just two weeks later, Cass Sunstein decided to leave his dream job with The White House leaving a lot of scratching heads in his wake. Rena Steinzor, president of the Center for Progressive Reform and professor at the University of Maryland said of Sunstein upon the announcement, “Cass Sunstein is the most well-connected and smartest guy who’s ever held the job, But he’s also done untold damage.” Isn’t that very interesting?
But it didn’t matter; because Americans went on to see Dark Knight Rises anyway. They put their fears away and went to the theaters to see the second most popular film of 2012 behind only The Avengers. Any fantasies social reformers had in the depths of their government manipulation attempts evaporated as millions upon millions of movie fans went on to the theater to see Dark Knight Rises. The film went on to make over $434 million domestically. In the international market Dark Knight Rises garnered an additional $577 million so if the Colorado Shooting was a “false flag” operation, it failed. And to the betterment of American life, Cass Sunstein is no longer the regulation tsar working directly for a very socially intrusive White House.
I might not think anything about Cass Sunstein leaving his job so quickly after the Batman shooting if I did not watch public school employees doing the same kind of thing locally when they get into trouble over some issue. It seems to be the M.O. of all government employees to simply transfer around from job to job to avoid investigations into their crimes. School principals, teachers, and superintendents do it all the time, so why wouldn’t Cass Sunstein? They are all the same type of person, meddling government types who seek to socially alter human behavior with the desires of the political ruling class.
Americans and world-wide citizens pushed politics aside, along with their fears of being shot and went to see Dark KnightRises regardless of everything that was against it. And America was able to export a film with a pro-American message to socialist and communist countries planting the seeds of freedom in those oppressive countries. Only American culture can produce characters like Batman which is adored by people all over the world as is in evidence by the type of film Dark Knight Rises is. It’s about freedom, not the manipulative controls by people like Cass Sunstein and Barack Obama.
There comes a time when an endeavor is stopped in its current form due to the achievement of objectives, or the mundane performance of stagnation. In my case, stagnation is not the villain. Even by my standards, I have written a staggering number of articles with the intention of help elevate the mind of the reader with news they were not, or could not get in the general media. By all counts I have achieved my objectives. The antagonists who first poked me into this journey have been crushed by intellectual merit, and the populace has noticed. The political landscape in southern Ohio has changed in part due to this blog at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom and now decisions must be made on how best to continue.
I am no longer the only game in town doing the job of citizen journalism. I have covered issues from corruption in my local school to the psychology of nations in order to frame properly the toils of our day. And I have been able to do this from thinking way out in front of the quality train, which is where the news is. I see and understand things by nature well before the people in the caboose do, so at first the things I say and do may not be understood until the caboose travels over the same landscape as the engine where I reside. The longer the train, the greater the difference, and time it takes for the caboose to arrive at the terrain judgment of the engine. But I am no longer the only person in the engine room. Joining me are several new minds who I’d like to introduce at this time.
I have always enjoyed young people, and have mentored many. I do not worry when I see there are people who wish to duplicate or improve upon whatever I am doing. I do not feel I must cling on to my post and preserve my monopoly, because if I felt that way, it would defeat my original intentions. To do so would be to suppress innovation and improvement for the lackadaisical ownership of domination, which points to most human problems. It is my job to continue leaning way out on the horizon to see what nobody yet can, and am happy to pass those skills along to whomever wishes to learn, because ultimately that’s how everything improves. In the world of blogging, and citizen journalism there are three young people all about the same age who have read what I was doing and wanted to apply their own skills to the task.
The first person is my son-in-law. For much of the time that I started Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom he chomped at the bit to get on the battlefield and help. But he couldn’t because he was not yet an American citizen, not until January of 2012. At his citizenship ceremony he took to heart the swearing-in and oath to protect America from enemies both foreign and domestic. Out of the hundreds upon hundreds who obtained their citizenship on that day, none more than Paul Townsend took the oath more serious. Within days of that ceremony Paul made plans on how he could help America find itself again, so he started the blog site below which should be visited.
While on the radio with my friend Matt Clark the other day promoting my new book, he also informed me that he too had just started a blog. Matt is about the same age as Josh and Paul, so they all have in common a young person’s desire to make their mark in the world by expanding on what they are witnessing. Matt, maybe more than even Paul or Josh has read Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom intently. I found Matt because I used some of his videos on occasion to make a point, and over time we just continued talking more and more. Matt is a very intelligent young freedom fighter who is a young Glenn Beck type. He already has the mentorship of Doc Thompson in the radio business so it’s only a matter of time before Matt gets his shot at being the next generation syndicated talk show host on par with Rush Limbaugh, or Sean Hannity. Within a decade of this writing, Matt will be a household name. Matt informed me while I was on the air with him that he had also just started a blog, because he had seen to what effect mine had been useful. You can see his work at the following link:
In addition to those new blogs, there have been many others whom I have interacted with over the last couple of years who have also started their own forms of citizen journalism.
Two years ago when I started Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom none of those above links existed, but now they do, and they are growing in influence. It is my hope that they will each attempt to surpass what I have managed, because my intention is not to retreat back into the caboose of life on the heels of great success. But rather to lean even further out in front of the train to push myself knowing that these new citizen journalists are covering ground that I don’t have to any longer. This frees me up to tackle issues that are more specific to my skill sets which reside further out on the invisible horizon.
So I will be approaching my work here at the OW in a slightly different fashion. I view the endeavor as shifting into a higher gear instead of traveling in the low one that I have been. I am able to do this because there are so many people who have joined me at the front of the train and have that ground covered more than adequately. My new task is not to just be one more person saying the same thing as twenty other people, but to say what only I can see, before everyone else gains the sight.
Around the time that Clark wrote his Enquirer article against me, picking sides in the levy fight at Lakota, Doc was fired and out of a job, Judge Napolitano on Fox Business Network was cut even with its excellent ratings, seemingly because of his relentless support of Ron Paul, and efforts of No Lakota Levy to reach across the political divide in the community to levy supporters to create Yes to Lakota Kids found many insiders playing extreme politics, that was not in the best interest for the community. But Bill Cunningham at 700 WLW whom I was openly very critical of because of his stance on Issue 2 and a Marconi winner of his own, I suspected had something to do with Doc being fired at WLW. Cunningham just signed his deal for his new television show and had shown a tendency to want to move more toward the political center after building a career bashing Democrats—he was changing his tone, and Doc represented a new generation of conservative. Cunningham also is the owner of Willies in West Chester where the levy hounds were visiting him to advocate his support for the next levy.
In February Doc was fired, and in March I was publicly being raked over the coals by the same people who had formally supported me. All one has to do is add up the elements and the conditions are obvious. Radio, like the print news is a competitive business and like any other business, employees seek to eliminate each other with brown nosing and sabotage in order to preserve their own careers, so none of this is sinister, or unexpected. It’s just a fact of life.
The reality is that the citizen journalism was changing the media business. Radio had adapted by using me as a frequent guest through the Doc Thompson Show, but once Doc was no longer at 700 WLW the influences who wanted to wipe the chalkboard clean of him did what they felt they had to do, much to their own ratings detriment. Like The Enquirer, many of the guilty parties will lose their jobs in the years to come because of the decisions they have made, meanwhile people like Doc will continue to be successful, in spite of the attempts against him. Doc, like Peter Bronson whom I spoke about in my previous article on this subject is a quality person, so by running them out of the business, the business of newspapers and radio have much less quality because of it. See Peter speak here–good stuff, and well worth the time.
As Peter Bronson’s recent speech at the event above reminded me, the motto in the newsroom used to be “never pick a fight with a person or a company who buys ink by the barrel.” The implication is that newspaper people believe that they can put someone under whom they target at a whim. We’ve seen this for years, when a newspaper gets their targets on someone; they look to bury them publicly. In relation to WLW John Kiesewetter has attempted to put Darryl Parks under many times using a lot of ink. There is an arrogance among newspaper reporters, particularly from old, traditional papers like The Enquirer who have seasoned reporters, that they have the power to make or break careers, or pass or fail levy attempts. They forget that it is their job to report the news so a public can make good decisions; instead they sometimes find they attempt to exercise their power of manipulation to a cause they personally support, or desire as a collection of left leaning public policy advocates.
That was the old world of news reporting, but not the way of the new. In the new, the new adage is that “ink no longer has value. Never pick a fight with a person who can type 1000 words every fifteen minutes and can produce 4000 word articles in an hour, and can do it day after day after day.” And when Lakota as a political entity represented by unionized, radical labor picked a fight with me, and attempted to use the old way to beat me, they had no chance, because I can out write them, out-wit them, out-speak them, and when things get violent and nasty behind the scenes I can give it back to them in doses 100X what they initiated, and that is the new way of citizen journalism.
For an example of how it was that day on WLW, below is the audio from the Bill Cunningham Show speaking with Scott Sloan whom I was on the air with earlier—both having a lot of fun with the salacious Enquirer article, as every radio station owned by Clear Channel, even on the FM dial did. I think on one level they understood what I was doing, even though they played like they didn’t. If it is Cunningham’s idea of an insult to call my actions similar to Rush Limbaugh, then I take it in the opposite regard. But Scott and Bill’s conversation is a fascinating study in what is exactly wrong with public education. Scott Sloan was against me in that broadcast for his own reasons, yet he leans toward my view of things in public education even though he is a lot more socially liberal than I am. Cunningham on the other hand made his living being every bit as boisterous and selling himself as a conservative, but actually living his life as a philanthropic progressive. Cunningham is very much a child of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, and that society is failing in every category. As a radio commentator and attorney Cunningham has shown that he is able to identify the problem, but both men have found themselves bitten by the modern trend of the male population to behave as Beta Men, even though deep in their hearts, they know better. You can hear it in their discussion; they are torn between what society has taught them and what they actually believe. Caution, the audio below is very salacious. Listen with caution.
There was no way to explain it to them on March 15th 2012, but I can now with historical context in the wake of the event. I had tried on the Scott Sloan Show earlier, but only time would prove me correct. More money at the state level will not help public education, and property values must be freed from the education debate because it was emotion that placed it there in the first place, due to radicalized unions and voters believing in The Great Society who helped give them power. It is the insecure new mothers and the beta males that has allowed that trend of emotion to take place and it must stop before an intelligent discussion about education funding can take place. Logic must be introduced into the education debate as opposed to the emotion that currently rules, and to my assessment, it does call for yelling and shouting. Pandering to emotional pleas will not solve the problem, and sometimes you have to call it as you see it, which might hurt some feelings. The context of my prostitution comments are explained in great detail in my new book Tail of the Dragon, which was on my mind at the time, since I was editing the final draft when this story broke, so the metaphor was fresh on my mind. For more detail refer to my article about why women like the book Fifty Shades of Grey.
Like newspapers even radio is limited as corporate managers may or may not support public education reform and can put a gag on talk show hosts to exercise their control over the content, and Cunningham has like a shape shifter over time adjusted his beliefs to the powers that control the station he works for.
Doc Thompson on the other hand has been fired by many radio stations for the simple fact that he does his own thing, and this tends to infuriate management. Yet in spite of that, he is a regular guest host on the Glenn Beck Program, and has just signed a deal with CBS radio to go into national syndication while the people who decided to play nicely, and by the old rules, found themselves always in second place behind those who control the rules. The reason Doc and I became friends with a mutual respect is because neither one of us have any love of the old media rules. We do not lick other people’s boots and we treat those old guard media types with contempt. We forge our own path, and do what we think is right for the sake of it. I know that reporters like Clark who are only given 400 to 500 words to make his point in a paper that is turning into a modern version of Wheeler Dealer, or Jerry Springer type radio shows like Cunningham’s comedy act that wants to be taken seriously at times, but has long ago lost his credibility due to his progressive tendencies are being replaced by media like what people are finding here at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom, and syndicated programs like The Doc Thompson Show, or GBTV with Glenn Beck.
People don’t want or care about the opinion of a puppet, and when a reporter or radio host shows that they are simply mouth pieces to larger organizations, they lose any power or credibility they thought they had. The desire of management whether it be at Clear Channel, Gannett, or the established political order to maintain their mechanisms of influence are the cause of their own destruction. They may have the short term gain of ratings spikes with sensational stories like the one that involved me, but in the long term people will side with me. They will see the villains are the reporters and talk show hosts who represent the old guard, and that old guard is protecting society from a truth they have helped conceal.
As Peter Bronson told his story of The Enquirer ideocrity letting a reporter of his caliber leave in favor of the average boot licker was the nail that sealed their own coffin, and the decision was not done on behalf of quality, it was done to preserve a political leaning philosophy built on emotion instead of facts, and that philosophy cannot be maintained through hard reporting. WLW did much the same when they elected to preserve the radio tendencies of old by letting new talent like Doc Thompson leave to start his own syndicated show out of Detroit in a competing market. And The Enquirer’s desire to blow my blog out of the water making it seem scandalous and illegitimate as a competing news source backfired in a big way because they failed to realize they were playing by the old rules where I was playing by the new. And in the new, I am free to use the First Amendment to full effect. I do not have advertisers, managers with political view points, aging Marconi Winners fearful of younger Marconi Winners, or any political bureaucracy to hold me back like Michael Clark and other reporters who are unquestionably restrained. Their editors will only give Clark his 500 words because they have to save ad space for the car dealerships, which cheapens the entire news presentation. Adversely, here at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom I can cover in as much detail the topics I want, and my talent is not restrained by any loyalty to corporate interest. At the projected rate of my readership, I will hit over a million viewers within the next year or two, because people value news in the style that I report it. Some of it is sensational, some of it is traditional, some of it is non political, some of it is pop culture, but the key is that I can decide if I want to cover it or not, and I am not confined to covering only education.
The success of Glenn Beck, and now Doc Thompson is that these news personalities do not allow their explorations of the truth limit them in just the realm of politics. Sometimes the source of the problems spill over into other aspects of society and using the old media rules are never explored. It used to be that a reporter like Michael Clark would use his ink by the barrel to focus only on the immediate issues of education since he’s an education reporter and not a sociology reporter, and not equipped by his editor to comment on such matters, even though some of the desire for a school levy is a sociological problem and not an economic one. Clark cannot explore that line of thought because The Enquirer will not allow it. So readers wanting to know more about what’s going on in the world turn to my 800 articles with over 1200 words each to learn the real story and that is what’s changing from the old way to the new.
As the newspapers decline more sites like mine are rising up and each have their own spin, and are directly competing with traditional newspapers in the Cincinnati area. All these sites have been created within the last two years and are a direct reaction to the news that “doesn’t” get reported.
An impressive list and as I think about it, most of them were inspired by the work that Doc and I did on 700 WLW, and Darryl Parks on Saturdays. Listening to us on the radio helped inspire some of them to get involved and do their own thing as a citizen journalist. It may have cost Doc his job but in the long run he is far better off now than he was when he worked as a second fiddle to Willie Cunningham who appeared to be protecting the “old guard.” My view of all this competition is the more the merrier, the world benefits when there is competition of ideas in a free marketplace. But when there is an attempt to eliminate competition, like what The Enquirer has attempted to do which was picked up by local radio, people can see through the act for what it is.
That is big trouble for entities like school systems controlled by powerful public unions who desire with all their heart and souls to keep the facts of their situation vague, and using Saul Alinsky methods of manipulation have learned how to frame an argument to the 500 words of a Michael Clark Enquirer article so that the truth never gets out, and it never gets discussed on the radio where talk show hosts looking for content to fill their three hour time slots look for new material. In this way the old guard was able to keep problems from being solved and prohibit a competition of ideas through methods such as the ones used against me by the Enquirer and 700 WLW as heard in the interview above. But for a little while, when Doc Thompson was employed at WLW, there was a good run of good material that helped start a new wave of journalism, that of the citizen journalist, where my material was sourced by WLW and the Enquirer until the heat became too great, yet everyone but the crooks benefited. And the window stayed open just long enough to evolve into a new direction which Peter Bronson spoke about as the media is changing before our eyes, and the old way may have barrels of ink, but the paper they put it on is worthless. Now, it is those who can produce 1000 to 3000 words in an hour who may lack knowledge of the rules of the game taught in journalism classes, but have the passion to write things that the rules wouldn’t otherwise allow under the old way.
Competition is good, it is the ultimate referee. If people decide they’d rather read a 1700 word article I write about school levies in Monroe or Lakota than the ass kissing diatribes of the typical Enquirer article emotionally pleading for more money by quoting a looting superintendent who threatens to cut off info to a reporter for not writing articles favorable to public education, then the people have decided, and the numbers on my end are good—very good. When the traditional reporter who looks for softball reporting by reading all their info from a press release given to them by public relations specialists working at a public school, and not doing any hard reporting discovers they are out of a job because they struggled all day to come up with a 500 word article when I can produce a 3000 word article like this one before they have their first cup of coffee in the morning, the fault is on them.
The lesson here is to never pick a fight with a person who can out-write, out-wit, out-maneuver, out-work, out-talk, out-think, and has the physical stamina of an entire news room. Not a good idea because the advocates of such prodding will surely find themselves swimming in their barrels of ink as the papers it was intended for lay unsold and useless in the press room.
Thanks Doc Thompson for the kind words. The Doctor will live on, as will Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom with my latest project, the Tail of the Dragon. As to those other characters, time is not on their side as the sand is almost out of the hourglass. All the ass kissing in the world won’t make the taste of shit they’ve been swallowing and dishing out for their entire careers worth it. And all the dollars in a retirement account or poolside margaritas won’t be strong enough to wash away the taste. My apoplectic utterances here at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom, especially in the wake of Michael Clark’s choice in The Enquirer, can produce more words by the hour than my competition on a wider range of topics that actually connect the dots, instead of avoiding them. So what follows now was a choice made from a foolish love of an ancient, and archaic bedfellow–old school politics in a society that is sick of it.
If this thing fails, what the heck does that say about us as a community? I’ll tell you…..we totally suck. Any community that doesn’t support its schools isn’t a community that anyone is going to want to live in. Housing values will take yet another nose dive (We’ve invested a ton of money in our house and the value STILL isn’t what it was when we bought it 10 years ago).
I get the economy is tough, and that some mistakes were made in the past, but what is the goal of this negative levy campaign? To punish the school board for the past mistakes? The only people who end up being punished are the kids in the schools, the teachers who have to teach them, and the rest of the community (i.e. ALL of us) whose home values will continue to NOT be what we paid for them over a decade ago. Wake up folks!
I do wonder what would have been “Achieved” if your no votes win.
there will be another levy….more money spent….so really..what did you achieve?
Sure you would have succeeded in your finger pointing campaign, but your wallet won’t end up being any fatter in the long run.
I would like to congratulate the Monroe School District for holding strong and voting down their off-season school levy that was designed to pass with low voter turnout in August. Predictably, the Monroe School Board has voted to put the levy right back on in November of 2012, which is a welcome attempt since the voter turnout will be much more intense as conservatives in Monroe will show up in droves to vote Emperor Obama out of office. Conservatives tend to vote down tax increases unless they wish to believe they can be conservative and still receive free government education that is socialist in its design.
To listen to the Monroe School District reasons for the tax increase it was to get them out of state control and pay back the money they were forced to borrow from the state to operate. If Monroe truly wished to balance their budget they would use the state control option to void the union contract and cut their labor wages by 5% to 10% which would instantly balance their budget. But there is no desire from the school board or state management to even attempt such a thing, even though it is a legal option, because the entire school system is set up to protect those union contracts which use collective bargaining to pay all teachers too much money with benefits that are entirely too generous. If Monroe wanted to balance their budget, they would attack their labor costs, not ask for more money to throw at inflated wages and benefits.
Monroe arrogantly announced before the vote on Tuesday August 7, 2012 that if the levy failed, they would put it back up for a vote in November. The implied threat from the school board to the community was that if it did not pass the levy they’d come right back with another attempt so the community might as well vote their way. The school is using the threat of force in an inadvertent way to point out that a “NO” vote is pointless. They are basically stating to the community, “Resistance is futile. We will take our money one way or the other.” Of course they don’t come right out and say it, but instead chose to use polite language to disguise the sinister intentions.
Monroe can say things like that by siding up with their unionized labor work force because the system is rigged against the taxpayer. Schools can legally attempt to place a levy on the ballot 4 times per year, so districts like Monroe if their levy fails can go right back at the voters 3 months later till they get their money by wearing down the resistance. The Little Miami School District went to the voters 9 times before the NO voters finally gave up and the levy passed preserving the union contracts without harm. But times are changing. Up in Westerville near Columbus, Ohio that school district barely passed a 6.71 mill emergency levy on March 6th. District officials there said they needed a levy to raise $16.5 million to balance their budget. The levy costs taxpayers in Westerville $205 per $100,000 of property value and that amount is not limited to only residential homes, but each and every business in the district. The levy is a huge tax scam and residents were angry that it passed so they are using an obscure part of the Ohio Revised Code to fight back against that levy by repealing it. The same day that voters went to vote on numerous school levies including Monroe, Westerville turned in well over 5000 signatures to have their levy repealed this upcoming November. Click here to learn how to do this. If Lakota ever passes their levy I plan to use our database of NO voters to easily collect the signatures we’d need to do the same. All Westerville needed was 5000 signatures to place the repeal on the ballot. In Lakota, over 18,000 people voted against the last levy, so it shouldn’t be hard to collect our signatures if needed, it would just take a little effort, but it would be worth it. This means that even when school districts fail to listen to the voters there is a recourse that can be taken against them, and Westerville is going to vote in November not to pass a levy, but to remove one. The campaign for that during a presidential election will be fantastic, “would you like to save $205 per $100,000 of your property value? Vote to repeal the Westerville School Levy!” That would allow Westerville School District residence to spend $200 to $1000 more on Christmas presents for their loved ones this year instead of flushing that same money down the toilet for inflated union contracts negotiated under collective bargaining.
Locally Fairfield, Lebanon, Little Miami, and Forest Hills all recently passed levies that could be repealed in the same way as Westerville is doing, and this is a serious blow to the public sector labor unions in Ohio who are used to getting everything they want, including the kitchen sink. So even if the residents of Monroe find themselves suffering under yet another tax increase, they do have a recourse to remove that levy if it ever does pass. I would advise the people who worked the No Levy campaign in Monroe to keep track of all the people who make contact with them in support of the “NO VOTE,” because those names may be needed later when it comes time to repeal the Monroe School Levy.
The assumption of these public schools is that teachers are worth infinite amounts of money and that the schools are sacred to the development of our children, and neither is true. Teachers are not all worth the same amounts of money. Some are worth $65K per year, but most aren’t worth $45K per year. And administrators are not worth $90K to $100K per year. Some may be, but most aren’t. It is collective bargaining that drives up those costs and that has only been around since 1982, and it has bankrupted education in Ohio. It is foolish to throw more money at a broken system, and the system is broke if it produces children that can’t find India on a map, and costs more than $7,000 per pupil to operate. The whole system needs to be reset and that will never happen if communities allow themselves to be extorted by school boards and state officials who are afraid of their labor unions. The proper management of the education funding problems is for the unions to either take pay cuts or to dissolve all together with more competitive options being presented. The old way is not good for anybody, except the teacher and administrator who make more than $65K per year for only working 7.5 hours a day, 9 months out of the year while tax payers struggle to pay the bill of loyalty to their community schools.
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This is what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon
When I put my support as aggressively as I have behind Atlas Shrugged Part 2 there is a good reason. A movie is a way that information the rest of us already know can be shared with those who are coming to know it. There is no reason to have petitions signed, to hold up banners at rallies, to even vote, if a majority of the adult population continues to be treacherously stupid and undo all the work that has been attempted on their behalf. This is why I now write full-time, because I feel this is the best way to help the world around me, by giving readers ideas that will help them undo the intentional evasion they have been taught to practice. My new book Tail of the Dragon is intended to deliver the message of freedom with the ornamentation of an intense car chase. Because I know the character of Rick Stevens requires an action packed plot to help the hard medicine go down easier, since he is an unyielding, personality that many people aren’t accustomed to dealing with, the intention is still to celebrate freedom and individuality. I am not interested in any other kind of character. Thousands of other kinds of characters have been created, but only a few handfuls of the strong individual types that I am interested in have been created. That is why the name of this site is called OVERMANWARRIOR. If the average man these days is one who is addicted to evasion, to a mediocre blandness in their existence, then I aim to be more than that—an overman who strives to exist beyond the limits set by collectivists to ruin the human race.
When many thought I had lost my mind months ago by publicly calling my political opponents latté sipping prostitutes with asses the size or car tires, I knew what I was doing. They thought I was playing by the old rules of politics that they had established. But I wasn’t. I was reflecting the front of the train mentally where people are beginning to realize that you cannot argue with some political ideologies, while others are out-right dangerous, and cannot be reasoned with. When those ideologies are confronted, they must be crushed without apology because no matter how nice you are to those types, or how much you attempt to cooperate with them, they have their agenda, and they will lie, steal, and manipulate anything it takes to destroy you. So compromise is not a definition compatible with the current war we are in. And at the front of this war of ideas are books of old and books of new along with movies competing with the entertainment that has captured generations. The battle is being fought there, for the hearts and minds of audiences in music, movies, television and books.
Playing such a game does not call for handshakes or tip-toeing around the issue. I can declare that I won’t do it anymore. Playing nice with those collective advocates isn’t going to happen on my end of the deal ever again. And I’m not alone in this stance. Increasingly over the last year it has been understood that collectivists do not deserve compassion, they do not deserve understanding, because they truly want to destroy the version of America that we love, so the gloves are coming off. To get a sense of this all one has to do is look at the way John Aglialoro has approached the release of Atlas Shrugged Part One as opposed to Atlas Shrugged Part Two. In Part One he had a big opening and invited Hollywood to view the film along with other media professionals and they did exactly what Ellsworth Toohey did in The Fountainhead, which was attempt to crush Atlas Shrugged Part One because they didn’t like the message, because they wanted to suppress it in favor of collectivist oriented entertainment, which has had a monopoly for a long time in America—too long. Aglialoro’s trust in the media business to treat him fairly cost him dearly, millions of dollars of lost box office receipts because the system shut down access to the film. Later, once Part One hit Netflix and came out on DVD, people rented it, and watched it, and enjoyed it, once the media hype had died down.
So understand that we are at war, and what’s at stake is freedom over collectivism, and money is the ballot box. This is why I am so intent to see Atlas Shrugged Part II successful, because in this kind of war I am the media. So are you dear reader, because you can’t trust the traditional sources on this matter. They support only one kind of idea, and that is the one advocated by collectivism, which is a crime against truth. If the ideas of collectivism were so strong, they would not fear competition from the theories of individual liberty and laissez-faire capitalism over the crony capitalism of a mixed economy. But they do fear it, and wish with all their power to shut down the message. I plan to use the literature that gained traction in the past to pound my wishes into the future, and I plan also to add to it with new work for future generations. But surrendering life to the quicksand of the collective is simply not an option. Peace with the collectivist is not desired. Their way of life can only be cast away from the continent of The United States because they have proven a desire to rule with a dictatorship of the proletariat, and the damage they have done to millions of people and the human race in general has been, and is unforgivable. Much harsher language will come in the days that have not yet seen the sun. That is a promise.
