High school girls, gay guys, and European men with way too much cologne appear to be the target of Fiat’s newest Jeep, Renegade. Fiat’s acquisition strategy of the Jeep brand from Chrysler was on full display at the 2014 Geneva auto show. They revealed what they intend to do with the automotive line nurtured in America and recognized throughout the world as a symbol of rugged individuality and toughness—they turned it into a mini. Fiat is quite boastful of their skyrocketing sales after their Jeep acquisition. The new Renegade will be built in some of the former factories crushed by socialism in Italy, and targeted for sale in Europe. From their stand point, this is a brilliant move, Europe’s roads are too small, the people too tightly packed, and their governments are corrupted by the ghosts of communism. Because of their mystical beliefs in global warming, Europe’s fuel costs are too high, and their expectations for personal freedom are very low. For them, Jeep, as it has been marketed out of America under the Chrysler Corporation was representative of American independence, so Fiat has taken that image and smashed it down into something that the rest of the world can enjoy in order to boost sales. For tightly packed Europe, the dirt roads of India, the washed out trails of China, the forever college students of Germany sung to social sleep by radical professors, the drifting yuppies of Brazil, and the up and coming drug dealers in Mexico, the Fiat version of the Jeep is perfect for them. But for the American, the new Jeep will be one of those throwaway cars that dads buy for their daughters, or men lacking masculinity will purchase because it’s so “cute.” The new Jeep Renegade by American standards looks like it might be capsized during a head-on collision with a bicycle.
One of the best vehicles my family ever had was a Jeep Grand Cherokee that we drove all over The United States. Its powerful inline 6 cylinder engine could pull boats with no problem; it could handle the Appalachian Mountains with ease, and perform well on the highway for long trips. One specific year my wife purchased a bike rack for the back of our Jeep and we took a family vacation down to Hilton Head Island. Once we arrived we biked all over the island. It was my wife, and two daughters with me on that trip and the Jeep had no trouble carrying a bike rack that could haul so many bicycles and still have the girth to plow through the wind, rain, and inclement weather from Ohio to South Carolina. Inside that Jeep there was plenty of room for all of us to comfortably travel and still pack more than enough supplies for a week of vacationing. Shortly after that trip, my wife was in a car accident that the insurance company totaled meaning we would lose the Jeep. She had been hit by another vehicle taking my kids to school as another car slid on the wet pavement during the heavy traffic mornings. Because the Jeep sat so high off the ground, and was so large, the vehicle took all the impact leaving my family safe inside. The airbags all deployed and they walked away without any harm. Initially, looking at the Jeep, I thought the damage was pretty minor. The bumpers had held up, the fenders where hardly wrinkled, and the lights remained completely intact. But, since the airbags deployed, the cost of repair was up over $10,000. It was a 1996 Jeep Grand Cherokee and the accident was in the mid 2000s, so the vehicle was getting up in years exceeding the technical value of the vehicle. However, if not for that wreck, we would still be driving that Jeep to this very day. If my wife had been driving a Jeep Renegade instead of a Grand Cherokee, my family would have been seriously hurt.
The Jeep brand was fostered by American car companies and spoke to the world of a lifestyle forged from capitalism that they simply couldn’t enjoy. When Fiat bought the brand from the financially strapped Chrysler Corporation it was clear that the Italian company had plans to use that image to saturate a starving world with a mirage of American freedom represented by the Jeep brand. Chrysler and General Motors specifically have major labor problems in America largely due to socialism driven by their unions, and could not live up to their own image, leaving them vulnerable in the global marketplace to Fiat. Fiat has so far sought to shrink down the Jeep vehicles catering to the European market but dressing them up to look like the old Jeeps. The Fiat Jeep is a kind of Angry Birds version of a Chrysler Jeep; it’s purely gimmicky but has compromised itself to fulfill a larger global strategy of wealth redistribution copying off Americans without the commitment to freedom that comes from such places. Common in the discussion of economics these days is the “global marketplace” and behind that discussion there is always socialism driving the dialogue. Deep in the hearts of the rest of the world is the belief that America’s wealth should be redistributed to them, and in the case of brands like Fiat’s Jeep, the image is used and repackaged as a version more compatible with countries wrecked with socialism. The subtle goal is proclaiming that another American brand is now in control of that global marketplace—known as “the public.” No doubt that President Obama celebrated when Fiat bought up the majority of shares of Jeep stock showing a “partnership” with Italy and America that would resonate with the long-term plan academia has always fostered—a large federation of countries working together instead of being at war with one another. It is similar to the reasons why men often want to sleep with the attractive wives of men they consider their intellectual and physical superiors—so that they can take something from their rivals that they don’t have in the first place. Fiat, from Italy is taking from Jeep the American ruggedness and putting their stamp of softness to it so to reap the short-term profits while destroying the brand right in front of America’s bankrupt face—while The United States continues to pour billions of dollars in aid to such European nations through financing The United Nations, military support and intellectual property. How many global film blockbusters have been produced in France, Italy, or Germany? What was the latest billion dollar film made in Spain? ………………………Anyone……………………………………………………………………………….anyone at all……………………………………………………………………………………….I’m still waiting………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………there isn’t one and never will be. Because books, movies, music that achieve such status are created by free people—Americans—and that isn’t an accident.
The Fiat Jeep is wealth redistribution, not just in jobs that might otherwise have been created in America, but of the essence of American creation, the Jeep as it was conceived by Chrysler. The Jeep I spoke so highly of, the Jeep Grand Cherokee from 1996 was conceived by Detroit automakers during the Reagan era before Detroit collapsed under the weight of their labor unions. The Fiat Jeep Renegade is a vehicle conceived by a Detroit that just filed bankruptcy and had to sell off assets to an Italian company who traditionally makes small cars, for small people and their philosophic grip on history. Surely the new Jeep Renegade will sell well in all the armpits of the world, the minds of Europe still recovering from the Dark Ages, the tribal hunters fresh off the Serengeti who have just spent the day hunting Gazelles because the grocery store had its food shipment confiscated by socialist radicals in charge of the country, or some hut dweller in Cambodia who is working 5 full-time jobs trying to pay for the broken leg his wife incurred during a traffic accident between two bicycles. The Jeep Renegade will be a treasured vehicle in places like that. But here in America, they will be driven by 16-year-old girls who think they are cute little “mini” cars, and will fill the parking lots of San Francisco gay nightclubs with air fresheners hanging from the mirrors to cover the odor of their clubbing activities. But on the road across America these little Fiat Jeep’s will be road bumps equivalent to pot holes for the larger vehicles which are part of a culture which embraces freedom and individual liberty with size, space, and horsepower. And all those things are missing from the new Fiat Jeep which is an insult to a brand that was built with rugged American history and a yearning for freedom that is unmatched anywhere in the world—and under assault by yet another foreign company driven by socialism to consume anything and everything that has value.
It has become obvious that most Americans do not understand the politics of the rest of planet earth. They believe that countries like Germany, England, Australia and Brazil are functioning on an economically equal playing field as America. But this would be a false assumption. The situation in the Ukraine where those people wish to break away from the so-called conservative statism of Russia and join the European Union displays the confusion epically. Ukraine is essentially seeking to leave a country run on one hand by the old hard-line communists who are currently in the minority in Russia and the United Russia party of Putin who is a former KGB agent from the days of the U.S.S.R. Many members of the European Union are openly socialist and are members of Socialist International, which has been covered here extensively. CLICK HERE TO REVIEW, (check out the map there.) Many of the countries being governed by Socialist International, which is essentially the entire European Union resent American freedom and the wealth generated under capitalism and they feel entitled by their corrupt Kantian philosophy to steal that wealth so that all people everywhere are equal. In short, socialists and their supporters are by their very nature on average, lazy and seek use the argument of equality to justify stealing from the productive and calling the process “fairness.” This argument was presented to the world during the 20th Century and every nation but America accepted it—as seen in the animated short below. Because America said no to socialism and communism, is why The United States is a wealthy nation.
Out of the European Union Germany is currently one of the strongest countries economically, but they are hardly bastions of capitalism. They have had a very strong presence in Socialist International but in that country a new socialist movement began starting in May of 2013 which considers itself a rival group–a group called the Progressive Alliance. This group intends to take the hard name of socialism away from debate so that members around the world are not so turned off by the old connections to communism. The Progressive Alliance is a global organization intent to spread socialism to every world government. They are not supporters of capitalism—in fact they are not even close to supporting such a thing. But if a careful analysis to their internal works were examined what they all have in common is that the members are essentially lazy people who look to the ambitious to carry them through life—just as the European Union, the United Nations, NATO and even the International Space station look toward American ingenuity, American money, American productivity to carry them from one day to the next. If America were removed from their alliances, they would perish quickly as their members are unproductive and looking to be carried through life on the backs of those willing to support them. So far, America has done so without complaint.
The first step towards the movement’s creation was the cancellation of the £100,000 yearly membership fee payment by the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) to the Socialist International in January 2012 by SPD Chairman Sigmar Gabriel. Gabriel had been critical of the Socialist International’s admittance and continuing inclusion of undemocratic “despotic” political movements into the organisation.[3][4]
During the 4–5 February 2013 spring Council of the Socialist International in Cascais, Portugal, 50 political parties discussed on the sidelines the formation of the Progressive Alliance, including the Movement for Democratic Change of Zimbabwe.[13]
The official foundation of the organization was held on the 22 May 2013 in Leipzig, Germany, on the 150th anniversary of the formation of the General German Workers’ Association (ADAV), the predecessor of the modern-day SPD.[14][15][16][17][18] It was reported that approximately 70 social-democratic political parties from across the world attended the event.[19][20][21][22] The Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats European parliamentary group joined the organization upon its official foundation.[23] In September 2013, the Democratic Party (DIKO) of Cyprus announced that they were negotiating to join the Progressive Alliance, and were scheduled to attend a seminar of the international in Stockholm on 24 October.[24]
If the land mass of Europe all the way to the east across Russia, China spinning around through the South China sea to Australia is considered, there is a vast swath of population that is in open support of either socialism or communism and they are all looking toward the wealth of The United States and want it redistributed to them. What they really want is the theft of the productive in America to their lazy, hands. In the case of the East, they are not lazy, but they lack imagination and ingenuity, and need American thought to carry them through their technical innovations. China can build an iPhone, but they cannot “conceive” of an iPhone from scratch. Only a free people, functioning under a capitalist country can do such a thing. This leaves a massive section of the world under the lazy influence of socialism, statism, or open communism. South America and Canada are not much better. Most countries in South America are left-leaning socialists and Canada is under the influence of European socialism. Only America and Japan economically stand on the side of productivity.
So why do any of the people function under Socialist International, or the Progressive Alliance have an equal seat at the table with America if they are not equally productive? The answer is that they shouldn’t, because they are essentially lazy next to the productive and are not equal by any measure. And that is a hard truth that the socialists of the world do not wish to consider because it forces a hard truth about themselves which they are not willing to consider. And the truth hurts. There are some of these progressive groups in America, groups like Progress Ohio and the Texas Progressive Alliance, (CLICK THE LINK BELOW), who seek to destroy capitalism to fulfill the intentions of global socialists. They are the cause of the current ideological civil war currently underway in America as they have captured the sympathies of the media and are in virtually every public school and labor union. It is the lazy against the productive and the productive are in the minority—extremely. And they still carry the economies of the world on their back in spite of the ingratitude of the socialist and progressive groups—which is testimony which confirms the truth in all its glory.
If you watched the videos above, you will have noticed that the American Howard Dean was at the Progressive Alliance event. In case you forgot who he was, here’s a reminder.
Let me deal with two birds here with one stone, the sad story recently at Lakota where a student was thrown in jail for bringing a gun to school and the really stupid idea of putting a roundabout at the corner of Maud Hughes Road and Millikin. I explained yesterday my thoughts about the student with the gun and alluded to a school shooting which I had been involved in and promised to tell a story I had from personal experience. I will do that now, and tie it in to what motorists can expect to witness as they travel through the South East portion of the upcoming roundabout. Many years ago during my junior year at Lakota a car load of boys came to a stop at that exact spot in a car riddled with bullets. The driver of that car died of a gunshot wound to the head, and I was on the other end of the tragedy and will explain the why and how in relation to the current situation. The media turned the issue into a circus, I was considered to be a dangerous gang leader and modern real life version of the West Side Story. Ballistics experts had conspiracy theories about how such an expert shot could have been made, and a manhunt ensued with a door to door search across the entire region. And of course there was supernatural assistance which confirms to me the very existence of otherworldly entities which many would call God. So brace yourself for a hair rising tale and an all too true story of honor, death, and supernatural activity as we jump into the most tragic story known surrounding the hauntings of Screaming Bridge.
But first I have to talk about roundabouts. They are very European and a real pain in the ass. I hate them because they impose too many restrictions on driving. They are fine for the saggy assed Europeans and their unshaved arm pits, their bad breath, and their political socialism because those idiots don’t have anywhere they really need to be since most of them get a month of government paid vacation each year. They are never in a hurry to get anywhere. Here in America, where we are productive and driving along a stretch of road like Millikin enjoying the countryside at about 50 to 60 mph, we don’t want to slow down to 20 mph to deal with a dumb roundabout where some indecisive soccer mom chick imported from New England is blocking our right of way. So since the Trustees of Liberty Township want to adopt all these Agenda 21 oriented “development designs” and won’t listen to reason, then they can drive right through the ghostly apparitions of at least one of the ghosts that hang out in and around Screaming Bridge which is just a few yards south of that location. Out of all the urban legends centering around Screaming Bridge, I know at least one of the tragic stories is true–because I was there.
Read more about Screaming Bridge and the upcoming roundabout at these links:
It was early January at the current Lakota West Freshman building and three guys were picking on some girls who were sitting near me. I’ve told stories before of my experience at Lakota. I had a group of kids who sat with me at lunch who were considered social misfits and were extremely rebellious. I had a reputation for being extremely daring and one of the lunch time games had been to throw food at the Lakota administrators who stood guard around the parameter of the cafeteria during every lunch period. I would often wail large chunks of food at them right in front of everyone witnessing. Most of the time I was very obvious about throwing food at them daring the administrators to do something. Of course their inaction prompted me to do it more, and more audaciously. So I had a reputation to manage when these three boys who had a history for being tough guys started picking on a girl sitting next to me. The boys were very tall for their age and were known to fight often. One of them picked up the coat of one of the girls and tossed it on the floor so he could sit in that particular seat to impress another girl who was within that group of young ladies. The girl who had her coat thrown to the ground protested. One of the boys proceeded to call her very grotesque names. I looked to the Lakota administrator who I had been tossing mashed potatoes at and he showed no signs of doing anything about it, so I injected myself on behalf of the girl. I told the kid to pick up the coat. The boy gave me a smart assed answer as he picked it up and put it back which evolved into a small war between my group and his group for the next week where we had a food fight which escalated over the ensuing weeks. Of course when food fighting lost its effectiveness we turned to games of strength, where I ended up punching a cafeteria plate shattering it into hundreds of pieces. The plates were those old hard plastic types which were extremely hard. When I punched the plate, the center broke away showering my friends and the targets of my aggression with debris. But the rim of the plate stayed intact and badly cut up my fist requiring plastic surgery to fix.
There wasn’t anywhere to go from there but into an actual fight off-site away from Lakota. When the boys saw how far I’d take things they got a little scared. It was their suggestion to fight and none of them wanted to fight me one on one, so they proposed that I fight three of their guys all at the same time at Screaming Bridge on Maud Hughes Road. I accepted once my hand healed up in about 6 weeks and could again make a fist–because I had on a splint which prevented my hand from closing.
At the end of February 1985 Nightmare on Elm Street was playing at the Showcase Cinemas in Springdale and I made arrangements with the guys I was fighting to finally meet at the Screaming Bridge at 10:30 PM. Over the weeks leading up to the event, things cooled down between my group and their group. They were obviously nervous about what to expect out of me. They knew the stories, but were confident that three of them would be enough to emerge successfully from the fight. But they had in mind precautions which were leaked to me by one of the boy’s girlfriends who had a crush on me at the time. She told me that her boyfriend had plans to bring weapons to the fight and were going to set up booby traps on the hillside which was very steep leading from Maud Hughes Road down to the railroad tracks below. Supposedly ghosts screamed at night from there and satanic rituals routinely were conducted to car stereos blaring Ozzie Osborn music. She begged me not to go, but of course I had to. She warned me that they planned to push me down the hill into the booby traps which would be seriously harmful; some of them were jagged toothed bear traps that could take off a leg. Other traps would include spikes angled to penetrate right through a body falling down the hill killing them. The traps would be constructed based on a Vietnam War guerilla warfare manual.
I made plans of my own. My friends all wanted to go to the fight to watch me combat the three guys. It was the talk of the school for that whole Friday. The next day on a Saturday it was agreed that we’d all meet Showcase Cinema and watch Nightmare on Elm Street then head to the fight afterwards. It sounded like a fun night, go see a scary movie, go have a fight at a scary bridge full of haunted folklore, and have a good bit of fun doing it. My plan was to take care of business then enjoy the evening with some girls that we’d pick up at the movie. We’d go in two cars, I’d have my entourage in my car and some of my other friends would arrive by pickup truck meeting me at the fight. On my side there were about ten spectators, five in my car, and five who would come by truck.
Little did I know but the previous weekend I had been visiting another set of young ladies at a nearby neighborhood and a friend of mine in a bizarre act of spontaneity ran next door to a neighbor’s house and attacked a semi truck that was parked there. The big truck had a grill guard that my friend stabbed several times with a knife simulating what effect it would have on a human body. I managed to calm him down after a while. He was trying to impress the girls we were with, and to a large extent, it worked. But when we left the girls house, the owner of the truck had been watching through his window and took down my license plate number when he saw my friend who had done the vandalizing get into my car. Screaming Bridge was only a about a mile and a half from this location and I thought often though-out the evening about the fight that would take place there the following week.
A week later while at the movie, I found some girls to meet up with after the fight, it was a group of five girls, one for each of the occupants of my car. In the trunk of my car were weapons I had brought just in case things got out of hand at the fight later. I of course had my bullwhip, but there were various clubs, knives, a medieval ball and chain along with a number of other melee weapons also there. I was very specific to both groups, the group who would drive with me, and my friends arriving in the truck later, not to bring any guns. If things went bad, we didn’t want to the temptation to pull any triggers. The goal was just to hurt the kids, not to kill them. The goal was to teach them a lesson, and that was all.
After the movie I made arrangements to meet up with the girls after the fight. They didn’t want to go to Screaming Bridge after watching Nightmare on Elmstreet, so agreed to meet us at a local Perkins around midnight once I took care of business. My friends were pumped up to watch a good fight and I was getting revved up now that the fight was about 30 minutes away. We headed out to my car ready for war yelling at the top of our lungs the way boys do when they are getting themselves worked up for a difficult task. But to my surprise, my entire family was waiting in my car for the movie to end and for me to return. They knew I was going to the movies, and apparently the police were looking for me. So my parents and siblings came where they knew I’d be. They had opened the trunk to my car and saw my whip and all the other weapons in there and they wanted to know what was going on.
I tried to explain that the weapons were nothing, but there was a more pressing issue at hand. The truck driver who had his grill guard vandalized by my friend was demanding at that exact hour to see me and get a formal apology from my dad. The guy could have reported this incident to the police any time during the previous week, but he chose that exact hour—strangely. Of course none of the adults knew of the fight I had to be at when 10:30 PM hit. The timing couldn’t have been worse. It could have, and should have occurred earlier in the day, but for whatever reason, the police and the truck owner wanted to talk to me at exactly that specific time.
I was very upset for reasons my parents had no clue of. My mom took my friend’s home while my dad drove me and the friend who had done the vandalism to the house of the truck driver to try to convince him not to press charges. We were driving down Princeton Road and past the intersection of Maud Hughes at exactly 10:26, four minutes from the time that I was supposed to be at the fight. I could see the truck lights of my friends going up the road at exactly the time I told them to be there. It was odd again that out of all times of the day, it was right at that exact moment.
We arrived at the truck driver’s house for a meeting arranged by the police. My friend apologized to the guy, and we spoke for a bit. The guy was reasonable and understood what it was like to be a young person. We had a nice talk. Off in the distance we heard what sounded like fireworks going off. I was very upset about being late to the fight and was very worried that my reputation would be reflected poorly in missing the event. As we sat there I was scheming for a way to get away and sneak over to the fight because the disgrace in missing it would be too much come Monday morning. While my dad and the truck driver finished their discussion my friend and I were standing out in the driveway by the car and we heard sirens ringing all over the countryside. We anticipated that a major wreck had occurred somewhere to the North, and it sounded serious because there were a lot of police cars.
The rest of my evening was trying to explain to my parents what had been going on with the vandalism issue, and trying to explain the weapons in my trunk. The next morning I was glum, I had missed the fight which I’d never hear the end of, and I missed meeting the girls I met at the movie theater. It had been a bad night. I had to work during that following Sunday, so I left quietly and wondered why there were strange cars parked off the side of the road close to my driveway with government plates. There were several, and since I lived in the country, this was a very strange sight.
The boys I was supposed to fight had been found in a car at the corner of Maud Hughes and Millikin all shot up. The driver had been killed with an expert sniper shot that came across the field and struck him in the side of the head passing in front of the other two passengers who were both in the front seat. And my name was all over the police radio. I had to work the day shift at the Emperor’s Wok Chinese restaurant on Chester Road that morning for the church crowd and the owner called me into his office where he kept a police radio on. My name was all over the reports as the prime suspect in the murder of a Lakota student. The trouble for the police—they were with me at the time of the shooting—so it couldn’t have been me. God works in mysterious ways. Suddenly missing the fight and the meeting with the girls was not so important, and a new level of concern moved through me. My friends who were meeting me at the fight were now missing. A manhunt ensued.
Their side of the story is well documented by court records, and it was really a tragedy for everyone involved. My friends had arrived at the fight and found that I was not there. The boys I was set to fight were already at Screaming Bridge and told my friends that they had killed me, and pushed me down the hill. This panicked my friends and one of them had brought a rifle, even though I said not to. He shot at the boys as they got in their car to flee the scene. My friends chased them down pelting them with gunfire. My friends thought they were defending me. They didn’t know that the police had already picked me up for another incident. They thought I was at the bottom of the hill in a bloody heap at the hellish Screaming Bridge where the mood of the area was not conducive to logic. The boys I was supposed to fight should have never poured gasoline on that fire, but that was a hard lesson for everyone involved.
As my friends chased down the car of the fleeing antagonists the guy who brought the rifle kept firing riddling the car with gunfire. As the car turned north on Millikin Road a chance shot flew through the passenger side window and in front of the faces of two of the three boys. The bullet hit the driver in the exact spot that a professional sniper would have aimed for which led to the rumors of a professional hit which I had supposedly organized. The reality wasn’t quite so dramatic. My friends didn’t want to kill the kid; they just wanted to scare him in revenge for being scared themselves. The police confirmed in court that they found the traps that the girl had told me that they’d have there, and inside the trunk of the car they found lots of malicious weapons that they planned to use on me during the fight. So the prosecution didn’t have much to go on against my friends, there was intent to harm on both sides, and it was every bit as dangerous of a situation as everyone felt it was. If I had made it to the fight there is a good chance I would have been the one that caused the loss of life, and more people would have been likely harmed, so the situation came out as well as it could have.
Of course everyone felt bad for the kid who lost his life. We hated each other, but not that much. Later in a fight that one of the other kids I was supposed to fight that night found himself in at a Friday Night Lakota football game, he was ganged up on by several other kids and I came to his defense, the same way I had come to the defense of the girl the year earlier. Sure he blamed me for the death of his friend, but I still helped him when he was in trouble—because it was the right thing to do. He suffered enough and was never the same after the loss of his friend which of course nobody wanted to see happen. But a lot of people grew up a whole lot that night, and the community had to come to terms with the kind of violence that can sometimes take place between students who don’t see eye to eye on things. The Lakota administrators were completely powerless to do anything about the matter, just as they are powerless now. They can attempt to legislate away temptations of such violence, but what they end up with is watered down brainless drones in the process. The cost of people’s ambition and will to live are not worth sacrificing just so that tragedies like the one described are avoided. It is obvious to me the hand of God in whatever form one wishes to apply, was at play, because of the strange coincidences that really defy reasonable logic. I don’t believe in tampering with such hands. Fate has to play out the way we carry out our decisions with one another in order to have authentic results.
The recent Lakota student thrown in jail the way he was violated him in many ways. Likely he was in a similar situation as I often found myself in, and he was either the provoker, or the victim, but he was doing what he was doing to act in accordance with his nature. Lakota imposed on that process by stepping in to prevent it so to adhere to a value judgment of society which is afraid of such raw emotion, and is going to great lengths to micromanage thought so to prevent such episodes of violence. They will even go to the extreme of numbing people’s minds so that everyone stays compliant. They don’t care if they ruin people’s thoughts so long as they don’t kill each other on Saturday nights. The value to the institution is the life of everyone even if the result of that life is a numbed down version of their full potential. The big difference with me is that I never allowed myself to become compliant, or brain-dead. I have never sought destroying my mind with intoxicants, so my approach to these kinds of problems are often raw. The result was that I met these boys in the Lakota cafeteria with the full potential of my nature and I had a lot of people willing to follow me into the bowls of Hell—as I still do—because of it. This ability can be used for good or evil. I use it for good as I define good, and that definition does not come from institutional parameters, but from my own life understanding forged by such experiences.
A Lakota student died that night meeting me for a fight that brewed for most of the 1985 winter. I don’t mean anything against his name when I say that there wasn’t anything about that night that I’d take back. A lot of people suffered, it was tragic, but it was authentic and part of a bunch of intersecting lives fighting for their definition of good. For me, defending good was in honoring the right of the girl in the cafeteria not to have her coat thrown on the ground. Was that worth the death of a young boy, or the voluminous amounts of money spent in legal fees—in my world it was. Because right is right, and it is through conflict that we discover merit when the tapestries of society seem inclined to hide it from us. Because of that night and the obvious work from God’s hand in protecting me just enough to let me see the events play out, a tremendous wisdom was given to me which I use to this very day. I was intimately close to the situation without being pulled so far in that I would be lost to legal nightmares forever. I have taken the lessons of that night and done countless good with the lessons. I consider the situation very valuable. I could have done like everyone else and said nothing when the boys bullied the young girl. If I had nobody likely would have died, my hand wouldn’t have been reconstructed by plastic surgery, my friends wouldn’t have been tarnished for life, the lives of the people I was set to fight wouldn’t have been haunted for the rest of their lives and the terrible pain their families have felt all along in the loss could have been avoided. At that time I had just been elected Vice President of the Dan Beard Council because of my work in the Boy Scouts of America’s Explore Post activities for all of Cincinnati. Once my name was associated with the death of a Lakota student, they banned me from further activity which was a terrible cost to me, because I enjoyed that activity. But it was still worth telling the kid to pick up the girl’s jacket and respect her—because he did forever after—at least for the next couple of months. But others had been watching, and knew that disrespecting young ladies, at least while I was around, was not acceptable and I would not put up with it.
Lakota administrators weren’t there protecting the rights of the girl. They were too cowardly to keep me from throwing mashed potatoes at them staining their suits with my lunch on a daily basis. They weren’t then, and are even less now in any kind of position to take a moral stand on anything because the goal of all such activity at places like Lakota are to save lives—not to help create value for those lives. The government institution believes that lives are valuable until of course we are talking about abortion, or the molestation of children, or the sex trade, then they are powerless to offer an opinion because all they care about is that they can manipulate public support for their endeavors, and they can only do that so long as they pack up their mindless students onto a bus and ship them back to their parents at the end of the day brain drained and ill prepared for the future. But at least those kids are alive—by the technical definition. Their heart is pushing blood through their bodies. They do not value life as I do focusing on brain activity being more important than the blood that pours through it. I see every day the corpses of a thousand souls standing in line at the grocery, or showing their friends the latest rare stone quarried out of the blood mines of Africa. Sure their bodies live, but their minds are dead and places like Lakota kill them. Sure they will damn my name for playing a part in the death of a Lakota student, and that event will always trail behind me like many other stories have over time, but I can promise that I have seen lives benefit greatly from their own authenticity, something that I have always pushed to experience. Sometimes you find yourself on the wrong side of the law, or on what’s right such as in the case of the guy who had the semi truck damaged by my friend showing off for some girls. But when I spoke to the guy, he wanted what was right, and when he met me face to face and saw my sincerity, he found we had more in common than not.
The fight at Screaming Bridge in Liberty Township, Ohio at the end of February in 1985 was about two groups of people fighting for their interpretation of what’s right and wrong. The school did not offer the answers to the manhood questions we were asking. So we had to find those answers ourselves. I chose the path of being a daring rebel against authority. The boys I was fighting chose to be a bully, and my friends wanted to experience fearlessness through my actions, so they tagged along closely, and sometimes did things I would never think to do, like vandalize a truck not so much to impress a bunch of girls, but me—to show me how bold they were. The gunshots where probably done for the same reason once primordial motives are ascertained beyond conventional explanation.
The reason we picked Screaming Bridge as the place to fight was because it was thought to be haunted and where else would such a confrontation take place. Young boys want to know that they can go into the mouth of our darkest fears and face the demons there. So while we were fighting each other, we were testing ourselves at the same time, which was the real cause of the fight. I had fought more than one person at the same time on several occasions, but I wanted to do it against guys that were bigger than I was, probably meaner, and I wanted to do it at a place known for demonic practice where even the demons of Hell would be fighting against me. With all those emotions present and the added fear of the place in general, it proved to be too much for the people who came to watch me fight that night without me there to calm their minds with action. But all said, if the hand of God had not interfered so obviously, the death toll would have been far greater, and the impact to the community, much more devastating. God doesn’t come down out of the clouds to sit on our shoulder providing a defined entity that we can often see and touch. But I will never forget the timing of driving by Maud Hughes Road and seeing the tail lights of my friends going to the fight toward a destiny that would turn out to be tragic, while in the company of the police who wanted my head nailed to a platter for an entirely different reason, and would otherwise want to throw me in jail in seconds once the shooting took place. It is in such murky stories like this entry into Screaming Bridge and the folklore of Liberty Township that it is obvious to me that God defends the good even when the ways are not easily defined by the misery present by destruction and mayhem.
When the stupid roundabout is built on Millikin Road cars traveling through the South East portion of that circle will pass through the spot where the bullet riddled car came to a stop. It is the resting place of the guy I was supposed to fight that night which ended straying off the road by a freakish bullet strike. For years I have driven past that intersection and wondered if his ghost was there mixing with the other area hauntings. One would hope that such spirits could move on and not be stuck in a tyrannical limbo, but you never know, especially under the circumstances. I always knew that the car had stopped off the side of the road and not in the path of Millikin Road traffic. Now, with the new roundabout, the road will carry vehicles right through the resting place of that terrible incident. Since history is often forgotten by the next generation and politicians who have no problems building homes on top of tombstones and old Indian graves—and in Liberty Township, this has happened a lot—the mysteries of ghostly apparitions and minor hauntings are something to be concerned about. Now, because of the new roundabout, we won’t be able to speed through that intersection any longer, but will have to slow down and pass right through the spot where the occurrence transpired. So it will surely add one more layer to the deep mysteries and sometimes haunted past of Liberty Township, Ohio, and the occasional terrible things that happen even when the intentions are good and we all find ourselves actors on a stage play of God’s drama.
If I speak to 100 people on any given day, 85 of them carry a loaded gun—most of them concealed. Those 85 people range in personalities from six figure executives to back yard mechanics who are more than willing to lift up their own pickup truck by hand while changing a tire to avoid the complication of going into the garage to get a jack. Guns are a fact of life in American culture and are the primary reason no country in their right mind would dare invade our homes because it would prove a tactical nightmare. Most of those 85 never draw those guns on another human being and will spend their entire lives never shooting anybody. They have the guns just in case—and for especially young boys; guns are a right of manhood. When a person carries a gun they are proudly stating that they are not betting their life on government controlled security like the TSA, the police, the manipulative CIA, the comb-over heavy FBI, the politically driven military or any other louse who yearns to dominate other human beings with government backed authority. That is why it was so disgusting that Lakota schools made such a huge deal over Deangelo Jones who had a loaded 9 mm in his backpack inside a friend’s car and was arrested and thrown in jail because of it.
By the way, all the videos shown here took place in the Lakota district over the last year, this even under very stringent security of police and Lakota officials during a levy attempt, when it matters most to them. Government workers are not a substitute for personal security.
What a wonderful school…………full of great values and educational aptitude. Take note of this for future reference.
I have some experience with school shootings which I’ll share in a few days specifically because of this case—and Lakota’s extreme overreaction to it. I was in one when I was a kid—at Lakota—so I have some authority on the subject from which to speak. Sometimes young men have issues with other young men that need to be settled, and the school imposes itself on that process when they infringe on the private rights of people, especially going through their back packs based on the word of some tattle tale who told school officials that there was a gun on the Lakota property. Lakota West Principal Elgil Card talked boldly after the arrest of Jones saying, “Appropriate disciplinary action will be taken based on the Lakota Student Code of Conduct. It is not permissible to bring any weapon onto school property even if secured in a private vehicle.” Smart…………..now you know dear reader why so many schools are attacked by lunatic gunman—because everyone knows that they unarmed places and the people there are vulnerable and too heavily dependent on complacent government workers to protect them. If you are a bad guy, or a deranged student looking for some sort of revenge, a school becomes a prime target because of the stupid comments of naive people like Principal Card.
You know what else is in the Lakota Student Code of Conduct, drug possession, and if the same vigor had been applied as the one who went through Deangelo Jones’ backpack, it is highly likely that marijuana busts on a grand scale would far eclipse this gun story—but in public schools these days, drugs are cool, sexual molestation of the students by the teachers is shrugged off, but if someone brings a gun to school—it is plastered all over the news and the freedom of a young 18 year old kid are violated ruthlessly. This Lakota story was even covered in Toledo, Ohio as school administrators beat on their chest as if to justify their awesome security methods—and ability to protect students from a potential crazed gunman on the heels of their latest tax increase. Lakota exploited the kid—Jones, for the benefit of the institution and trampled all over his rights as an American citizen—and are damn proud of it.
Meanwhile the panicky levy supporters in and around Lakota are holding their little ones a bit closer thanking Lakota officials for protecting their children from the dangerous Deangelo Jones. They are proud that they raised taxes on property owners all in the name of safety so that a do-gooder could get Jones in trouble for carrying a gun on school property. These same people have given a free pass to teachers who were caught sexually seducing students, or other teachers who are very permissive to drug use.
I would argue that drugs are far more dangerous than guns, because drugs destroy the ability to think, where guns are simply designed to tear open the flesh of another person. Without a mind, there isn’t much of a life for anybody—a mind is far more important than the flesh—because without a mind, a person really doesn’t have anything but blood which pumps through a living carcass. The amount of drugs in the Lakota West parking lot on a daily basis is likely to cause a whole lot more damage to other people and the future economy of our nation than a tiff that Deangelo Jones felt he might have had with another student—or his desire to show his friends that he was a man—and could now carry a gun at 18-years-old. Where are the tattle tales over the drugs in backpacks of the Lakota West parking lot even to this very day, and where is the will to do anything about it? There isn’t one.
Lakota made a big deal about the gun brought onto school property by a student because their social position fits the nationally driven progressive agenda against personal firearms—which was delivered to America from a United Nations intent to see the entire planet stripped of personal protection. The public education stance against personal firearms fits that progressive message—so they feel entitled to infringe upon the Second Amendment rights of Jones and anybody else operating outside of progressive politics. Jones is an 18-year-old man, not some kid any longer—in spite of what some corpulent politicians decided was best in Columbus, Ohio. The Lakota position against firearms is not about safety and logic—it is more about reassuring the line of dialogue that guns are “bad” and should be feared. Lakota, and the media, used Deangelo Jones to instill fear into the public by making them even more terrified of firearms in the same way that student athletes are used to solicit more tax revenue from property owners under Friday night lights on cold October evenings. The goal is community manipulation toward a direction that the progressive institutions desire—and Lakota is a very progressive institution.
The students at Lakota who witnessed this whole Deangelo Jones situation will grow up and accept that the school has authority over individuals who carry guns. They will accept the molestation of the TSA without concern, or when the police break down their door someday during a suspicious tip from a neighbor—all in the name of protecting the “state,” they will obediently submit to authority. If the students at Lakota learned anything from the Deangelo Jones case it was that guns are to be feared, that the state has authority over the individual, and that even close friends will rat out suspicious behavior to do-gooder authority figures. Those lessons will carry over into adulthood when those same students will someday vote, and they will think of Deangelo Jones and vote against concealed carry laws, and personal protection not controlled by local law enforcement. When that time comes, the 85 people I know who are law bidding citizens and are the makers and shakers of the local economy will become outlaws who will have their property confiscated by the state and held against their will in jail with a $10,000 bail. And that is the real intent behind the press releases, and the ecstatic dream of every progressive institution in America, especially those in public education. Those same schools will applaud a woman’s right to kill a baby, or a college student to intoxicate themselves on weekend nights destroying the genetic code of their own physiology with THC marijuana smoke and non-thinking commitment to “getting high.” But if a person declares they have a right to the Second Amendment……..watch out………the howls of fear will emit from the mouths of the school levy supporters and weak-minded government advocates—because the real goal is not the one they advocate, but the ones left unspoken and from a foreign land—who secretly yearns to possess all that we have—and can never until Americans yield their love of guns to the benefactors of authority—which they control through political strings and financial contributions. That strategy is being implemented by do-gooders laced with too much cellulite around the midsection, and people who are too lazy to change their own motor oil, let alone a tire. And when they see gun, they wet their pants, because they have been taught to fear such things by progressive institutions like the one at Lakota—a parasite on virtually everything that has value.
As to all the news stories shown above, how can Lakota keep all those stories contained so that the public thinks they are getting a lot of value for their tax dollars……………well, they spend a lot more tax money on public relations to keep their image good so that all the sad little things like murder plots, vandalism, sexting, and mass shooting threats stay off of people’s minds. But for students who know the reality, carrying a gun isn’t a bad idea. Smart people do carry, because they don’t trust other people to their own security. Obviously, Lakota isn’t up to the challenge of providing security, as the evidence presents.
It is time to have a serious discussion about education outside the realm of simple difficulties in funding it. It is time to challenge any assertion that government schools have of taking American schools into a realm suitable for a “global marketplace.” Any educator who says such things should be instantly terminated for non conformance by American standards. As proven, the rest of the world has been corrupted by the Cold War of the 20th Century where communism spread through virtually every institution of academics in the world, from Jakarta to Cambridge, to Yale. To understand more clearly, read the book We The Living. It will tell all everything they need to know about the current problems in public education. There is NO doubt that the conditions described in that book are what’s causing our present problems in education. Yet only in America has any real economic progress of any worth taken place. If American economic markets failed, the car industry in Japan, China, Korea, Germany and elsewhere would be destroyed, the iPhone factories in China would whither away. Many other products that are produced by American companies in oversee markets essentially to run away from American labor unions and the tyranny of the Department of Labor, and the EPA would cease, because the initiative to create those markets started in America and no place else. It is time to have a heart to heart discussion of just how bad the situation truly is and to stop apologizing to the world for being so damn good, and America has been. The rest of the world should try to be like America, not America trying to be like everyone else corrupted by communist attempts to alter their economies.
After my article the other day about the OEA union in Ohio, I received a lot of interesting feedback from my friends in Galt’s Gulch, it’s an online community who have created in cyberspace the kind of Atlantis found in Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged. The filmmakers created the place to promote their Atlas films, but the site has taken on a life of its own where really intelligent people from all levels of society are spending time with like-minded enthusiasts who are generally philosophic Objectivists. I would say that the intellectual capacities of the typical people who spend time in the Gulch are well above average, so feedback from them is very valuable to me. After my article, I received two comments from Gulch members who have been involved in education for a great many years and left their impressions. Those impressions were worth noting and have been listed below along with the links to the place in the Gulch where the original comments can be found. They are worth reading as specific entries into the education argument and I offer them here for that purpose. These are not people who are like me in that they just despise public education as a primary infringement on personal liberty. These people tried to work within the system and have turned away to report their experience—something which I think is just the tip of the iceberg. I have spoken to quite a few teachers in person, on the phone, and am friends with quite a few, and they all reflect these next two entries. Once a few teachers see others breaking ranks and voicing their opinions, I am confident that many more will follow—and they need to.
I retired from teaching 7 years ago, after 20 years in education, for several reasons, one of which was that the Progressives had completely taken over public education. I taught American History to 11th graders. The textbook I was to teach from was ridiculously slanted left: half a chapter on the American Civil War, 1 chapter on WWI, 2 pages on the Spanish-American War, on 3 chapters on Progressivism, 3 chapters on the New Deal, 1 chapter on WWII, lots of information on LBJ, Nixon was the anti-Christ, the usual leftist views on Vietnam, etc.
I usually assigned the textbooks to the students because I was required to do so, then taught from my own notes and my own materials. Until the last few years, I had an assistant principal that did not concern himself with what I was doing and so I taught American History, not Revised American History. The last few years I taught, though, I had a new assistant principal who was a dyed-in-the-wool Progressive. The woman hounded me like a coon dog on the scent. I was reprimanded several times for not using the textbook, subjected to unannounced observations, and once suspended without pay for 2 days.
Common Core is the Progressive’s wet dream. It does not teach any higher thinking skills, no extended thought processes, no critical thinking. It turns out nice, stupid automatons who will not question TPTB. It destroys any interest in life-long learning, because learning under Common Core is so tediously not fun.
I don’t know how much this adds to the discussion, but I want to add my conviction that public education is broken … has been broken for some time. There is no quick fix; I don’t believe it can actually be fixed at all. At this time, charter schools or private schools are a parent’s best bet.
This is definitely representative of what is happening in Ohio schools (as well as across the country), and has been for 15 years or more. 15 years ago we had Maslow group therapy and group hypnosis on all classes in grade schools here, instead of academics. We had history teachers teaching kids they had “rights” with no mention of responsibilities. We have ongoing values clarification in required health classes. It leaves one asking, “Where’s the academics!”
These teachers are brainwashed, either by the colleges where they get their free Masters degrees or by their unions. Our local union leaders once admitted to me they were turning children against their parents, because THEY thought it was best for them. Kids are taught, “There is no I in team.” – at which point I gave our daughter “Anthem” to read. khalling just talked to the father of a 7 year old the other day, who said he could not understand why his daughter suddenly acted to disrespectful to her family – I filled him in..Teachers and even administrators are all in for this collectivist agenda. I thank Tom DeWeese (Ohio guy) of American Policy Center for letting me know 15 years ago.we were facing a nationwide agenda. Actually it is UN driven at this point. Kids will be taught to embrace UN Agenda 21, and already learn property rights must go.
Yeah, I too started out the 60s as an anti-Vietnam liberal, while my grounded brother told me another Civil War was in our future. He read history more than I did, but being curious, I started reading history. Mao did it for me, I began to see the agenda around me, I began to learn that McCarthy was right, there were commies in the government and other professions, trying to turn the US. I should have known, living in North Dakota in the early 60s, my Dad moved us to Texas, after he felt overwhelmed by the scope of an active CPUSA up there at the time. I hated Johnson, still do, and that also helped wake me up.
“’What got everyone re-energized was the debt ceiling,’ said Ann Becker, president of the Cincinnati Tea Party, who attended a meeting in Mr. Boehner’s district of more than 200 people Saturday to discuss a long-shot challenge to him for the GOP nomination.” That was a quote out of the Wall Street Journal where Cincinnati Tea Party President and personal friend Ann Becker made nationwide news following the straw poll results in Eaton, Ohio trying to determine who will run against John Boehner in the upcoming primary. Traditional big government oriented Republicans like John Boehner, John Kasich, Mitch McConnell and many others specifically in the Ohio and Kentucky region are facing major challenges—which is how things are supposed to be. The Wall Street Journal is one of the last of the respectable papers in America, so it was wonderful to see Ann make the news.
A lot of people throughout the country do not know that Southern Ohio is ground zero for the heart and soul of the country. The primary resistance to public education solidified in this region, it is the front yard of major GOP Republicans and is the heart of a current civil war within the Republic Party situated specifically in Butler County, Ohio where old school cronyism is meeting up head on against the new rebels of the party who are insisting on Constitutional purity. At the heart of many of those activities in many different capacities has been Ann Becker. So it was good to see her mentioned in the Wall Street Journal.
Many traditional Republicans like John Boehner and the money machine that funds him primarily coming from the Carlos Todd Republicans, are bewildered as to what people like Ann have been yearning for. They thought that all they had to do was come out against abortion, stand for lower taxes with lip service, and present a resistance to same-sex marriage that the religious base of the Republican Party would fall in behind. The well-known business method which people like Carlos Todd of Butler County—a developer who has used political involvement to ensure the stability of his investments—is that you pay to play ball and if someone wanted to work hard, got to know all the right people, that anybody could make it in America.
But that’s not how things were supposed to be, and people like Ann have stood against it—and behind her legions of much more radicalized advocates for Constitutional purity are calling for the heads of Carlos Todd’s Republicans. Ann was always level-headed and understood all sides of an argument. She even ran against me in 2005 in support of the Lakota levy. By 2010 she joined me in opposition, but we did not always stand together on those battle lines just as now there are many who wish she’d take a sword to the head of the GOP when other methods are already well under way that don’t make such a mess. But the underlying current to the politics of Southern Ohio whether it is the efforts of the West Clermont School District to stand against organized labor control of the school board, The Liberty Township Tea Party fight against the IRS and being in the middle of the civil war in Butler Country where John Boehner/Todd Republicans are fighting against Tea Party activists, or Ann Becker’s efforts to dethrone the Speaker of the House in Washington D.C., and my overarching attempts to throw a light on all forms of collectivism spanning through all those fields. There are few places in America where the war wages more vigorously than Southern Ohio, and Northern Kentucky. Not to be taken lightly, Rand Paul is from the area, and is taking the political message of people like Ann Becker to the front lines of a presidential race. Paul is too liberal for me, but he does represent the future and I’m rooting for him.
Few people know it, but the Doc Thompson Radio Show on The Blaze is broadcast from Southern Ohio across the entire nation and they have directly taken on virtually every House and Senate seat up for grabs in the 2014 election. They broadcast from a secret location and often not in the same place day-to-day. Other popular personalities from Southern Ohio are Libertarian Girl who is also personal friends with Ann Becker and is bringing a youthful following to the libertarian movement pulling votes from traditional Republicans and activating young people who might otherwise be inclined to vote for a Democrat.
The landscape is changing rapidly, and the end result will be something different. It is hard to tell at this time exactly how, but one thing is for sure, the Grand Ol’ Party will not be a bunch of old men protecting their real estate investments in the future, and they will either adopt, or they will become extinct. They will either get on the train, or they will be run over by it—because going back to the old ways won’t happen. Too many people are awakened now to return back to those complacent times.
People are still apathetic, but as Ann gave me a series of very important news reports of which the Wall Street Journal article was only one, this new upcoming generation is different and is not tolerant of stuffy old Republicans like John Boehner. There are still plenty of people who will vote for Boehner, probably enough to keep him in office, but that is changing quickly. Two years from now, Boehner may lose his base completely at the rate of change that we are seeing. Even if he hangs on to win the primary in 2014, the next time won’t be nearly so easy.
Just four years ago when the Ohio Education Association put out a press release, every newspaper, television station, and news report followed their statements without question. Now, those same outlets are taking OEA reports far less seriously because there is a lot of scrutiny thrown in the direction of that government based labor union that wasn’t there before. Southern Ohio has been a place where much-needed gasoline has been thrown on a fire that was already started by Glenn Beck, John Stossel, and many other high-profile commentators who began questioning the status quo. Like Ann said in the Wall Street Journal, “What got everyone re-energized was the debt ceiling.” It did, and everything mentioned was an offshoot of that issue. My opposition to public education is driven off the extraordinarily high cost of public education forcing taxes higher on people who may not support the liberal viewpoints of the government schools. Boehner has done nothing to stop the national debt but use his majority in the House of Representatives to lay down for the President to run him over. The Republicans have been complicit in the crime of looting the nation, and people like Ann have stood strong against very strong forces who demand the status quo. But that status is no longer relevant, and the cracks in the system are growing into crumbling supports of a structure that will come crashing down very soon—because there’s no money, intellectual will, or credible aptitude to continue the charade.
I am proud to know Ann Becker. She has done some great work, and she will always be near and dear to me—because her fight for liberty, justice, and honor started a chain reaction that cannot be stopped now—and she will always be known as one of the first. It’s a pleasure to know her.
John Stossel is a regular at the yearly Atlas Society events, which is a large group advocating the Objectivist views of Ayn Rand’s work in philosophy. You can see Stossel’s speech from the 2013 conference below. One thing that jumps out at such events is the large number of people who are involved from all levels of society. If this event were directly compared to a recent Ohio Education Association meetings of a same general type, anybody would conclude that the Atlas Society members were much better prepared for life, had vastly more intellectual capacity, and were generally better people in virtually every category. However, the OEA is much more widely known and accepted in political circles where the Atlas Society is still considered a “fringe” group, but this is changing rapidly.
I am not a group oriented person. I avoid them like a plague—even those where I generally agree with the participants, I quickly become disenfranchised when too many people are in association. The reason is not that I dislike the people; it is that I value my individualism to a greater extent. Group associations are corrosive to personal authenticity so I avoid them. Objectivists are closer to my personal epistemologies in virtually every category except for their position on drugs, personal relationships, and religion. Objectivists are more likely to be sexual swingers which is not something I find attractive. So there are issues where my values do not completely align with Objectivists, but in many more ways than not, they are best positioned to represent my general philosophy.
Ayn Rand essentially was advocating for the freedom of the human mind to be creative without the restriction of group oriented psychological anchors. In business, to her, the activity of an entrepreneur was a creative enterprise that had great value and most groups–socialists, governments, hoards of second-handers imposed themselves into that important attribute destroying production. Being productive is what Objectivists are all about, productive in the way they cook their food, make their money, even how they maintain relationships—everything is centered on productivity. Productivity in this case is the creation of something new whether it is art, a material item, or even an ideal.
Contrary to this is most every faction of human existence where the goal is to avoid productivity. Group oriented activity is all about sharing burdens so that one does not have to go it alone—and in that process individual productivity is lost. This is why such group associations are essentially evil—because they hamper individual creative input. In my life I create something in virtually every hour of every day. I typically get up at 5:30 every morning and I go to bed often very late. In those waking hours I am creating, whether it is for business, art, philosophy, or personal growth—I am always looking for ways to create. One of the most despicable moments for me is when someone comes to my door wanting to sell something—not because I don’t want to buy Girl Scout cookies from the little girl down the road or hear a sales pitch from a representative of a local church—it is because of the lost time robbed from me to be personally productive. While I’m standing on my porch listening to someone else’s needs, I am not being productive, personally—and it bothers me. Without shared values to unite people in such a conversation, I will always come away emptier than I began while the other party will leave filled and I will have also lost my productive time.
I have spent hours upon hours alone and closed to my thoughts being productive and been quite happy because the enterprise was not so much to get a pay check, or have someone else recognize my value—but in conducting my life as an individual contributor to my own authenticity which is fulfilling in itself. Only people at the Atlas Society understand these traits. The local teachers union has no comprehension of these things. They are simply parasites off the tax payers. The local firemen have no idea about such things because their entire existence is built of personal sacrifice. The local church has no idea because they are built off sacrificing this life for the next. The local business has no idea because to them everything must be sacrificed for the greater good of the company. The unifying theme of all these groups is the term, “sacrifice.” It’s the old notation left over from our Neanderthal past that something must be given up so that something can be created and this just isn’t the case.
Creation occurs from a free mind. It is not something that can be concocted by force as government believes. There are no kings, queens, college professors or figures of authority who can use force to “create” anything—whether it be a work of art, a magnificent novel, a painting, or a business. The more rules that government creates only serves to destroy creativity in the human spirit. It does not “create” fairness, it only limits creativity.
This is why the only organization that is really doing the right things for the right reasons that I can see is the Atlas Society and those similar attempts to take the work of Ayn Rand and take the next step. The people in that room with John Stossel, and the people who are involved with the new Atlas Shrugged films, and the site Galt’s Gulch are truly pioneers in a time where all the elements of oppression are aligned against them. They are literally on a new frontier of human thought which can be a scary place, but it is good to see that they are up to the challenge and facing the tribulations against creativity with a boldness that will become the headlines of future folklore.
Most young people are not paying attention to the current events in the Ukraine, or the unrest in Venezuela, or the posturing of China against Japan. They don’t know that President Obama’s administration is attempting to use the FCC to control news content, or that the IRS has been involved in corrupt activity. The sum of all these events are clashing with the teachings that young people are getting from government schools leaving them unsure who to trust or what to believe. So they aren’t participating, and are focused on the events of pop culture. They are not reading books, going to Tea Party rallies, or even searching for a way to save the world. They just want to get by and enjoy their life to some small degree. This has opened up the entertainment market to an explosion of comic book sales, movies, and fantasy driven entertainment. The world of fantasy is far better, and easier to understand than the deceitful world of the present—so it is there where many of the contemporary minds of youth reside.
When I was a kid the very first cartoon I enjoyed watching was Popeye the Sailor, followed closely by Speed Racer. Over the years, I enjoyed Starblazers,Spiderman, Looney Toons, and Godzilla as some of my favorites and I took the messages of those simple stories into my adult life unfiltered. To this day the thing I enjoy doing most is the “right thing.” I learned this from Popeye at age 3 and still remember vividly those early cartoon moments. Those cartoons had tremendous influence and many people my age and younger share this enthusiasm with me. Not everyone has preserved their love of those early cartoons to the extent that I have, but most people hold reverence for the cartoons of their youth. These cartoons have the power to either build up a mind or destroy it. For instance, Bevis and Butthead on MTV did a great deal to destroy culture while the same animator tried to redeem himself with the Fox cartoon King of the Hill. Currently Family Guy, the Simpsons, and American Dad—all laced with deep progressive philosophy–are the current trend which is writing upon the minds of countless young people the thought processes they will carry throughout their life. Teachers want to believe that they are what shape a child’s mind, and politicians caress themselves hoping that Common Core will unite the nation’s children to a government-run message of productivity. But in reality, cartoons are shaping young people and giving them the foundation thoughts which take them into adulthood.
This is why I am currently ecstatic over the new Disney production of the Star Wars: Rebels animated series coming to the Disney XD channel this fall. Shown within the videos on these pages are the main characters and the content. I think the show will be unlike anything ever done on television since Disney produced Zorro, and Davy Crockett for a generation who now attends Tea Party rallies. When I talk to Tea Party types and really get down to the nitty-gritty with them what they want is justice as defined for them by the temperament created by those old shows from the 50s and 60s. It’s more complicated than that of course, but the foundations of their thoughts are rooted in the values of those old Disney productions–having a mom and a dad at the dinner table with them, and church on Sundays. They find the behavior of the current political trend reprehensible, and this leads to a desire for rebellion. This is the primary cause of most discontent discourse throughout the world—specifically in the Ukraine, in Syria, even on college campuses.
Star Wars: Rebels has the ability to explore the nature of rebellion without it being explicitly investigated by earthly reference. The creators at Lucasfilm have the ability to explore the deep anxieties of the individual spirit to crave freedom without being political. They don’t have to deal with race relations, political parties, economic philosophy, or any polarizing trait—they can simply tell the story of how a rebellion formed to overthrow an empire. It’s a deep human craving that transcends party politics and because of that, I think this is the most important story that will be told in my life time. I’m sure it will be fun, and entertaining, but more than that—it is giving to a new generation of young people a sense of value—a value that is not presently available to them.
I think often about Popeye the Sailor and some of his messages which were “I am what I am and that’s all that I am,” and Wimpy’s statements about, “I’ll pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.” These basic values I have taken with me throughout my life. Wimpy’s comments taught me a great deal about debt, while Popeye was always very proud of who he was—flaws and all. I know how much those simple stories meant to me, and I can only imagine how much impact the new Star Wars: Rebels will have on a new generation of young people. The previous Star Wars cartoon; The Clone Wars on The Cartoon Network after five seasons is just now starting to have an impact on a very skeptical viewing audience. I watched every single episode many times. My wife and I watch them together on Saturday mornings and love them dearly. But in many ways, Rebels will be a lot better. Clone Wars for me always felt like a modern commentary on our current situation. I’m sure the film makers had no intention of doing such a thing—these things have happened over human history many times and aren’t specific to our time. But there is always a little sadness in knowing that all the heroics performed in Clone Wars will result in the creation of the Empire. In Rebels, the Empire is already in control. Now it is up to heroes to save their society from the control of tyrants and that is an important distinction.
Millions of young people are going to watch Star Wars: Rebels and it will become their favorite television show. They will grow up and take those messages, and values with them into their adult lives just as modern-day older people revere the good ol’ days of Disney shows like Davey Crockett and Zorro. As simple as that sounds, it really is the foundation principles behind most thought processes. Just as people from my generation think differently because of the static patterns given to them from their entertainment culture—particularly cartoons, new cartoons like Star Wars: Rebels will have a far greater impact. I would say that it is the most important contemporary work of art currently being done anywhere in the world because it brings with it through story value.
For many, they will dismiss Star Wars: Rebels as just another cartoon designed to sell action figures at Target and Wal-Mart. But it’s more than that, and will show the real impact on television this fall. Needless to say I’m excited about it because there will be dramatic change ushered in behind this simple cartoon. With the distribution power of Disney, they are uniquely positioned to do great good in the world and Rebels is just the start. When George Lucas sat down to close the Star Wars deal at the Brown Derby at Hollywood Studios in Florida he knew what he was doing. His Skywalker Ranch had been set up specifically for the purpose of creating such wonderful shows like Star Wars: Rebels. Lucas knows that education is the most important thing you can give young people, and he knows that public education is failing. That’s why he has spent a considerable amount of his fortune on education. Much of that money has been wasted on the current education system, like tossing a cup of water into the ocean and expecting to see the waters rise in proportion. Real education comes from foundation patterns, and in our society, cartoons are the origin. This is why millions of people flock to Disney World to retouch the stories of their youth and bring renewed appreciation to lives otherwise plagued by cynicism. Star Wars: Rebels will mean a great deal to a large number of young and old minds, and the sum of that value will be a benefit to us all.
Great leadership is not being taught in the many classrooms across the world. In those places instructions by people who are only scratching the surface of understanding are bold attempts to lead a team to victory. Only a handful of people in the entire world understand—sadly, but lucky for me the Glazer family in Tampa Bay is one of them. The owners of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers understand that leadership is not so much in the obvious recognition of being a leader—it is in setting the table so that others can succeed as individuals. The Glazers were the first to have a pirate ship in their north end zone that fires cannons when the team scores. They are experiencing two of their first players going into the Hall Of Fame under their ownership in Warren Sapp and Derrick Brooks with more on the way. They have produced many coaches for the NFL who have went to other teams and had great success, and they have produced several players and coaches who are now in the broadcast booth. The Glazers in Tampa are trend setters who benefit the NFL experience in ways that nobody in this current time will ever give them credit for—but years down the road in hindsight will be recognized as the most modern-day molders of the success in the NFL. It’s all about setting the table for unlocking individual success for the goals of a team—and the Glazers understand how to do that. When an idea of theirs does not work, they quickly get off it and try something new which is unique to them. Over the last 5 years the Bucs have made four coaching changes and recently after a 4 and 12 year they fired the entire coaching staff and front office for a complete rebuild with old Buccaneer coaches and players to launch a new decade of dominance. And to put a period at the end of their intentions, the Glazers have decided to remarket themselves with new uniforms that are quite spectacular and have the potential to unlock in their players, coaches and fans a new generation of Hall of Fame producing players that will take their organization where they want to go. It’s all about setting the table so that everyone else can enjoy the meal they’ve prepared. The Glazers are setting the table for the NFL’s next ten years with leadership that is uncommon in its scope and understanding.
I’m not keen on the high school and college process of vetting great players for the NFL. I don’t want to support public education just so that a school can produce the next Warren Sapp, or Gerald McCoy. It is up to talent scouts to find the kids to fill the game of football, not tax payers to fund the process from the front—even though that is how it’s done. But regardless of that, I do enjoy the game of football for a lot of reasons—most of them because of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. For 17 years I have watched the old uniforms and emblems released by the Glazers revolutionize the NFL. If the Bucs have not been the greatest influence on the game of football, I can’t imagine who else has been. While most of the sports related press focuses on quarterbacks, running backs and the stats in the win column, the Bucs invented the Tampa Two defense, and the kind of marketing that has generated tremendous revenue for every team in the league. It is because of the Bucs that the Patriots fire their muskets when they score—in direct answer the Buccaneer cannons in Tampa. It is because of the Bucs that other teams sought more aggressive color schemes as it is well documented how the Bucs have a higher winning percentage when they wear their red jerseys. Since 1997 when there was a uniform change the Bucs had a swagger about them that seemed provoked by their new uniforms which carried them to several playoff appearances culminating into a Superbowl win. The uniforms were so hated by other teams that the Oakland Raiders actually filed a law suit against the Bucs in 2003 which was thrown out due to the fact that it was filed in a California court while intellectual property issues are handled by federal courts.
Everyone is looking for an advantage. Most NFL players are as good as all the other ones, and most of the coaches are just as good as everyone else. So to gain a tactical advantage, team owners are always looking for the right leadership traits to carry their teams to higher levels of revenue streams. The best way to do that is to win and after a series of failed attempts to find the right coaching staff to carry the Buccaneers to a return to constant playoff appearances—the Glazers elected to spend the money on a complete makeover from top to bottom—even down to the uniforms. There is nothing better to unite the minds of the young players on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers team than being the first to have such an audacious helmet with the proud flag displayed boldly on the side, or having a chrome grill on their helmets. The Bucs a few years ago were the first to use iPads for their playbook, and now have a reputation of always looking for the latest and greatest in technical innovation to give their players an advantage over their opponents who are often just as good if not better.
People who have worked with me in the past are often frustrated that I do not care much for traditional management priorities. Rather I spend most of my effort on team building and setting the table for other people to have success. My success is when I remove the opposition for others to have success so that I can utilize a strategy of my choosing using the mass of a team to overwhelm the barriers of the task I want to achieve. That is easier said than done and won’t cause me any lost opportunities to reveal here. Often doing such things is like dragging a herd of donkeys up Mt. Everest one by one. The trick isn’t so much as seeing how it’s done, but knowing what to do and when. I do a lot of speeches, hand punching and deep psychological analysis to discover how to uncover hidden human potential—because it is there that an advantage always resides. Most people are skilled, and in the NFL everyone is fast, everyone is strong, everyone is smart—so to gain an advantage other elements have to come into play.
The Glazers understand this very well. When you land at Tampa International Airport, the Buccaneer flag that flies over One Buc Place—the training facility for the football team, is unmistakably huge. You can see it clearly from the airport. There is nothing like it anywhere in the country. When players come to Tampa to play for the Bucs they have to look up at that giant flag which essentially greets everyone who visits the Tampa area by air. The players have to live up to that high level of commitment provided by the Glazers represented by that giant flag.
I have spent many Sunday afternoons watching Tampa Bay Buccaneer football games and have seen a lot of excitement over the years—even when they lose. There is almost always a swagger about the Bucs which makes their football games more exciting. But that swagger does not come so much from the players, but from the Glazers who set the table for that swagger to find a home. The swagger comes from untouched human potential locked away from the world through various social restrictions. The Glazers ignore those restrictions so to unlock that potential for their use—and they are far more right than wrong. I fire cannons off my front porch when the Bucs score because the Glazers started the trend. I have enjoyed my game experiences in Tampa so much that I seek to duplicate Raymond James Stadium at my house on Sundays. I hang my flags everywhere—a few of which were actually given to me by the Glazer family, and I blast smoke machines all over the house and create quite a festive environment. I have yelled so loud at the television during some of these games that I have shattered glass. Nobody sleeps in my house during a Buccaneer football game, because they are exciting, and that excitement was created by the Glazers—not so much the players themselves. The player potential was always there, but the Glazers unlocked it for the entertainment of the fans.
Now with the new uniforms, this will only increase and I am excited about it. On the night of the announcement seen on the first video above with Warren Sapp revealing the new logo my wife was begging me for an evening in the hot tub—which would normally be a coveted activity. But I told her that I had to see the Buccaneers new logo first. Once I saw it we could get in. She came to me in a state of seductive undress, but the NFL Network indicated that it would be the last story of their broadcast, so I held up my finger to wait another 15 minutes. She then pleaded with me to turn it on at the hot tub, but I was glued to the screen. I wanted to see the new logo on the biggest screen possible. Finally, after waiting all day—and watching the NFL Network for 50 minutes, Warren Sapp revealed the new helmet and the next decade of my life flashed before me. The old uniform entertained my children as they watched my excitement during Buccaneer football games hoping the Bucs would score so I would yell at the television and fire off the cannons from our porch filling the house with smoke. Most of the time the smoke is so thick that nobody can even see the television. Now the new uniforms will usher my grandchildren into the same kind of behavior because the new logo is exciting and will lead to many more exciting games giving me something to cheer for—if only because it’s so cool.
I love the new uniforms and the Buccaneers as an organization who understand that leadership is not in the observable feats, but the hidden ones. Sometimes it really is as simple as a uniform change—and in this case—it’s a change that will have a dramatic impact on a team who really needed it. The table for success has been set, and now it’s time to eat. But the cuisine is not chicken, mashed potatoes, and corn on the cob—it’s the competition. And they are ripe for mass consumption.
Congratulations to the 1851 Center for making the Ohio Education Association “ENEMY LIST” as provided on the agenda page of their OEA 2014 Collective Bargaining Conference which can be seen in full at the bottom of this article. I have been on their enemy list for a number of years and am very proud of it, specifically covered on Session H-1 during this conference and H-4 EXPOSING OUR ENEMIES: ANTI-UNION AND ANTI-PUBLIC EDUCATION FORCES, parts I and II. It is good to have such social parasites name you as an enemy. It’s like a cockroach damning your name just before your foot crushes it—it makes you feel good. As far as education, these OEA members are the cockroaches of our children’s lives. They are openly destroying their minds with a war against traditional value replacing those values with a progressive education that will doom them for life—and that is something which should anger every single person with a child in a public school.
Oh, you don’t believe me? Then dear reader, watch this video.
I have said much on this issue and have been in front of it for a number of years. So I’d like to welcome the 1851 Center to the position behind the battle lines with me with great fanfare. Please enjoy the press release from Maurice Thompson from that center covering their response to this new honor. It is wonderful to learn that these government unions see a group dedicated to preserving Ohio Constitutional Law as their enemy—because it reveals what the OEA has always been about. The pressure we have applied to them has revealed their true intentions all along—which is confirmation of all the years I’ve made the statements against them.
1851 Center responds to unearthed Ohio Education Association “Agenda.”
Columbus, OH – The 1851 Center for Constitutional Law today issued the following response to news that Ohio’s largest teachers union, the Ohio Education Association, has named it to its “enemies” list:
Today, the 1851 Center learned that OEA invests its time in identifying its enemies, and that deliberating on how to “deal” with them.
The Agenda for the OEA 2014 Collective Bargaining Conference outlines its “Critical Issues Sessions.”
What the OEA “considers critical” is identifying and destroying its “enemies.” Session H of the OEA’s annual meeting was entitled “Exposing Our Enemies: Anti-Union and Anti-Public Education Forces.” There, the OEA explains, “Participants will learn the scope and main goals of key local and national anti-union and anti-public education groups pushing the corporate school reform agenda. Participants will explore key major opposition and corporate reform players, including the Koch brothers, Students First, ALEC, Tea Party Patriots, the 1851 Center for Constitutional Law, and the Ohio School Board Leadership Council. Participants will learn how to identify . . . enemies and key players in their own communities. . . ”
Equally disturbing, the other “critical” sessions were largely devoted to how these government employees could obtain less accountability and more public funds for themselves at taxpayer expense: Collective Bargaining, Negotiations, Compensation, Teacher Rights and Working Conditions, Bargaining Teacher Evaluations, and ensuring the rights of lesbian, gay, transgender, and bisexual employees.
Not one of these sessions concern how to become a better teacher. That apparently is not considered “critical.”
These are the people who have captured the power to educate Ohioans’ children and intercept Ohioans’ funds. And this is, literally, their agenda.
They did not share this agenda willingly. But we will share ours.
We support defending constitutional rights and limiting government. As to education, this simply means the following:
Freedom of educational choice for Ohio parents and children.
Fiscal restraint and responsibility, rather than persistently resorting to increasing property and income taxes to fund public school districts.
Freedom for Ohioans who are or wish to become teachers to decide for themselves whether to pay a labor union.
Transparent ballot language and no use of public resources to pass levies.
Are these principles “anti-union” or “anti-education”? You decide.
But if supporting freedom of choice, educational opportunity, limited taxation, and fiscal responsibility makes us an enemy of the Ohio Education Association, then we proudly stand as an enemy of the Ohio Education Association; and we are honored to appear on this list. Perhaps dissimilar from the OEA, our allegiance is to the betterment of Ohioans and their children; not to the union self-interest that consistently operates to their detriment.
The 1851 Center maintains that Ohioans would be better served with public servants who spend more time concerning themselves with educating Ohioans’ children, and less time attempting to plot political victories and milk already-struggling Ohio taxpayers.
But this won’t happen under our current set of rules; and so it’s time for those rules to change.
We remain committed to protecting you and your family from these people.
