Lakota like many other Ohio schools is experimenting with a new progressive education standard which seeks to remove the value of a grade and replace it with a new kind of report card. The essence of this new grading system is called standards based reporting, and features a measure of whether or not a student has obtained a level of competency in a learned task. The abandonment of the traditional grading system is the removal of quality from education which is the overall intent. Since modern education cannot properly measure quality through the top down learning structure assessed by a grading system to determine exceptional results from mediocre results, government schools are moving toward this new standard. Here is what it is and how it’s measured as reported by Lakota schools in southern Ohio.
STANDARDS BASED REPORT CARD
Lakota is pilot-testing a new kind of report card in several schools this year. Although the test of the “standards-based report card” is only in third grade at Cherokee; fourth grade at Heritage and sixth grade at Woodland, we want to share information about these report cards with all parents who have children in elementary school. This is part of a continuing weekly series of information about the new reports cards and the pilot test.
What is a “standards-based report card?”
A traditional report card (A, B, C, etc.) shows a single grade a student earned for all the combined work done – tests, quizzes, homework, classroom work, etc. — in one subject area, such as math, science or social studies. The purpose of the new report card being tested is to instead communicate student progress toward an end goal – mastering a specific learning standard. A standards-based report card identifies specific skills and content that a student is expected to master while in a certain grade. Then it uses a 1, 2, 3 grading system to show the child’s progress toward that specific standard. A “1” means a student has not yet mastered the skill or content. A “2” means a student is making good progress towards mastery. A “3” means a student has mastered the particular skill or content.
It’s important to understand what a standard is. One standard for fourth grade, in English/Language Arts, is: “Compare and contrast the point of view from which different stories are narrated, including the difference between first- and third-person narrations.” When a student demonstrates he or she understands different points of view in story narration, and can compare and contrast those points, the student would earn a “3” grade, demonstrating mastery of that particular standard.
That all sounds very “educational” until it is realized that the entire education system will have to be dumbed down to allow for such acceptance gates of understanding as opposed to the traditional method of not only measuring knowledge, but the quality of that knowledge. This new standard only shows that a student has an understanding, but it ignores the quality of that knowledge. In the old method, an “A” stated that a person understood information at an exceptional level, a “B” at a moderate level, and a “C” meant one had a passable understanding. Anything less meant that a student was failing to grapple the information.
What has been abandoned is the quality of understanding during learning and therefore the expectation level of education in general. Under the cover of improvement, public education has found a way to protect itself from the increasing pressure of attaching federal money to funding based on performance when their government employees are failing to actually reach children by disguising the charade through removing the quality portion of education. They have done this by eliminating value judgment in a traditional grading system.
For those concerned about Common Core methods used in government schools, standards based report cards are attached directly to Common Core. The path to these teaching methods is inevitable failure in every category of human endeavor. This is why the most prudent method of combating these maniacal despots is to remove your children from all government schools and waive the free baby-sitting service. Parents who can afford to should home school their children because it is the only way to remove these progressive influences from a child’s education.
Government schools will continue for the next decade to reach for air in their struggle to stay relevant creating feel-good programs like these standards based report cards to repackage their failures into bright shiny boxes. But what’s at the core of Common Core is the embrace of the mediocre, the un-exceptional, and the lackluster to make the “common” the only standard that matters in a government run society infatuated with fairness for their democratic masses—the otherwise lazy, contemptuous, and the valueless.
Standards based report cards are the latest attempt to avoid any kind of measurement that actually expects learning to be achieved by the masses of children attending government schools. It is meant to camouflage failure with garments of success to conceal the rotten core that is at the heart of public education. It is meant to make future products of government schools even worse than they are today—thoughtless malcontents who laugh at every Beavis and Butt Head joke, but have no sense of wonder at a shooting star—other than to make a wish and pray for a winning lottery ticket.
I normally get gas for my vehicles during off times, when there are fewer people at the gas station during the day while the rest of the world is busy. I don’t like to get gas in the morning when most everyone is up and off to a job of some kind. But recently I had to, so I stood in line at 6:30 AM and watched ten people in front of me purchase gas, coffee, donuts and lottery tickets. If you wrapped all the minds of those ten people into a single person, you might have had enough intellectual power to generate a small pocket flashlight. But nothing else. Those are the products of public education as they stand today under the old grading system. Now, thanks to Common Core, those same types of people will only become dumber. But one thing that will increase will be lottery ticket sales. Out of those ten people seen at Mark Sennett’s UDF store in the affluent Liberty Township corner of 747 and Princeton Road, where people make reasonably high level incomes and have decent educations—relatively speaking, 4 out of 10 people bought lottery tickets hoping for a jack pot to free them of their financial bonds to productivity. Under the new standards based report cards, that future number will likely be 10 out of 10—along with a pack of cigarettes and a brown bag bottle of beer in the morning. That will be the result of these education changes.
There were a lot of great points made by Rush Limbaugh recently when he noted that China’s Jack Ma spewed nearly identical Reganomics sentiments regarding the future of his country’s economy as what came out of the American 1980s. Ma’s company Alibaba was ridiculously successful when it was a public offering on the New York Stock Exchange making the young man the richest man in China. Now that rich man wants to help other people become rich in his country with a similar pro capitalist message. Meanwhile, the wealthy in America have allowed themselves to be scorned by the lazy, ignorant and needy into stagnation. It wasn’t the Hong Kong Stock exchange or the Beijing financial district which made Ma so wealthy—it was the capitalism of America that did it—yet Americans have fallen into a disservice of that economic system through guilt provided by an education system that teaches the opposite of what Jack Ma proclaims. Listen to that broadcast with Rush Limbaugh below.
There is no other blame than the American education system for the obvious embrace of socialism over capitalism which has led to the current crises. I realized how bad it was when I became involved in local school levy issues serving as a spokesman for some of the very rich in my school district. They were very happy to let me go on the news every few days and represent them to the media becoming the target of countless controversies until I decided I wasn’t going to take a lot of back-talk from those parasites who wanted desperately to tarnish my public reputation. Even that assumption was presumptuous in assuming that even I after all that I had said publicly that I would even accept the progressive definition of things in America and cave in to the pressure of a bunch of rabid feminists regarding school taxes and deficient parenting. Those same supporters quickly went underground hiding from those progressive terrorists even though many of them had a lot more at stake financially than I did. Yet they didn’t defend themselves, instead they used charities and other social events to cater favor from the political class to leave their capitalist endeavors alone. I pointed out to them that this was essentially communism—that they didn’t have to yield to the pressure of a bunch of saggy assed despots and that they didn’t owe them their time and attention. But there was a fear in their eyes that defied reason and it was in those movements that I realized to what extent socialism had taken hold in America.
The guilt about possessing wealth starts in public school. During those same school levy campaigns the general philosophy of the pro tax advocates was one much more at home in Jack Ma’s home country of communist China than in the United States and several generations of people have now been trained to believe that their wealth creation efforts are bad unless they give more money to schools, charities and the needy. But what never gets mentioned in those same schools is the reason that people become needy in the first place. Capitalism is routinely attacked in public education institutions which is as stupid as attacking the nature of a human heart for beating in a chest. Capitalism is the heartbeat of the American economy and it needs to be defended not avoided.
One of my favorite local restaurants in West Chester is the Jags Steakhouse. It is one of the most expensive dining experiences in the city of Cincinnati and offers some of the best food around. Michelle Brown in 2013 was voted with the best chef award and she deserves it. What she puts on a plate is sheer art and worth the $30 to $50 dollars it costs to eat there. A typical dinner for two will cost anywhere from $200 dollars per couple to around $1000 depending on what kind of wine is used during dining. And of all my visits during all times of a day—during lunch, during dinner rush, or even late in the evening after a movie the restaurant is thumping with business. The dining rooms are divided up nicely allowing customers to space themselves out in relative privacy. The staff from the front podium, to the valet parking to the floor management is always spot-on attentive. But it’s not just the food that I love—it’s the honesty. Inside the Jags restaurant capitalism is embraced without fear and I often think that places like that should be a model the rest of the world copies, not resents.
But outside of the parking lot of that fine establishment comes the utterances of the jealous. When the word Jags is mentioned to the typical gas station attendant they think of the movers and shakers of society and there is a bit of scorn in their dialogue. That scorn is the hatred of pure capitalism and the sometimes crony capitalism where business owners take a member of government to dinner at Jags to win them over to their side of an argument to get some regulation approved that otherwise wouldn’t occur. The capitalist often believes they must do such things to stay in business—and they also believe that they must toe some line of progressive belief to avoid a boycott against their businesses which is a real shame. The outside of Jags to those who are more socialist in their political beliefs than capitalist looks menacing and uninviting. Because of the cost of entry, many don’t even attempt to dine there. But once inside, those who are willing to pay such prices for food are typically capitalists in some regard or another and at least while they are at Jags—are not afraid to flaunt it a bit. It is that standard that I think I like the best—there is an expectation of excellence the moment you step into the parking lot and I find it refreshing. That experience is often worth a $500 meal when a similar experience could be had for under $100 in a rival restaurant. Chef Michelle Brown is worth that extra margin and the management at Jags unapologetically embraces capitalism making it in my opinion to be the finest place to eat in the Midwest including many of the offerings in Chicago. What puts that restaurant over the top is its embrace of capitalism and trickledown economics—which is now becoming fashionable in communist China of all places by Jack Ma.
Without America Jack Ma would have been just another penniless dreamer, just as every government worker in the United States would be destitute if not for the taxes looted off American enterprise for jobs created to further the grips of bureaucracy. The people who make those American enterprises in the Midwest can often be found dining at Jags on any given night and are a cut above the rest in the way they think. It is good to sit around such people who at least during dinner service are not afraid to flaunt their wealth and excess. At Jags they are not afraid of reporters quoting them with a socialist slant to their articles and can relax a bit and be themselves. But it shouldn’t take a nice restaurant to bring this out in them, they should possess that honesty at the grocery, at public meetings, and at the gas station because capitalism is a standard everyone else in the world should be measured against. It is a bar that people should rise up to meet, not to chastise because they are too lazy to reach up to the challenge.
Capitalism is mostly an invention of America and it needs its protectors. Limbaugh is right; Jack Ma should not be the most vocal defender in the world of trickledown economics. Government parasites don’t create jobs that actually make wealth; they only make jobs that confiscate the wealth that others make. The people who routinely eat at Jags actually create the jobs that drive an economy and they should not feel that they must hide in a darkened dining room just to be among their own kind. It is not their fault that most people want to be slugs—and they should not feel guilty to show their excesses. Expensive dresses, watches, and cars are signs that a person has been more productive than what they personally consume as people—which means their efforts have a trickledown effect to all sectors of the economic spectrum from the poor and needy to the young and hungry. Without the efforts of the capitalist, nothing happens. This is a concept refined in America. It doesn’t need a Chinese guy to explain it to the world—and it doesn’t require the endorsement of the official communist country of China. It is they who are late to the party and it’s about time that America defend itself once and for all, and stop hiding in the shadows. Bring Jags to the world, not the world to Jags. Chef Michelle Brown is already busy enough.
Whenever one of these Atlas Shrugged films hits the marketplace or something along the same lines—the hard core left reveals their true beliefs. Out of all the negative reviews of Atlas Shrugged Part III by progressive types one by the ultra liberal Salon Magazine writer Steve Almond jumped out as exceptional for all the wrong reasons. Of course, being like a young twenty something child who thinks they rolled over in the morning and knew everything about the world there was to know because somebody told them so—the typical New York liberal believes the rest of the world is driven by the same vagina minded passivity which motivated them—and they actually believe that all counter thoughts to their progressive tripe is “fringe.” The fly-over states to the west of New York City is a scary place full of dangerous right-wingers who listen to talk radio—not readers of Salon, or the European salivating New York Times. But on rare occasions they find a way to get their thoughts down in writing for all to see, allowing some measure of their disjointed philosophy to be measured.
Below is a recent article written by Almond as referenced by a Rush Limbaugh dream disguised as a review of Atlas Shrugged Part III. It is hilarious and before anybody at Salon decides to take it down at any point in the future, I have put it below including the link. I even provided the link to Almonds anti-football book. (Yes, he is on a campaign against American football as well). It is hard to believe there are people out there who know so little about the world, yet think they know so much. So for proof, please read this Salon article in its entirety below.
Here’s what I think happened. I think Rush Limbaugh had a lousy day at the office and drowned his sorrows in bad Mexican food — something along the lines of three El Charrito’s Enchilada Grande packs — and then I think Rush fell asleep on his sofa and had a beautiful dream.
In this dream, all the most powerful and talented Americans finally get fed up with big government and its bureaucratic parasites and follow a hunky guy named John Galt to a gorgeous valley in Colorado, where together they declare themselves on strike against the government. This means they get to live in harmony and throw awesome Caucasian dinner parties and invent miraculous technological devices and pay for everything with shiny gold coins.
And because this is all happening inside Rush Limbaugh’s mind — with its misty yearnings for underage third-world prostitutes and endless Oxycontin — the production values of this particular dream have the quality of an off-brand soap opera.
It’s all pretty awesome. Weaselly government leaders meet in back rooms filled with cigar smoke to plot new ways to steal money from rich people and nationalize industry and force scientists to invent torture devices so as to control the population. Then they swish brandy around in snifters and blow smoke rings.
Meanwhile, back in paradise, this hot babe named Dagny, who runs American’s only remaining train company, crashes her plane and John Galt finds her and carries her back to his pad where he doesn’t have sex with her — not just yet. First, he’s got to introduce her to all his badass friends, like the doctor who examines her with his killer new medical gizmo and says, “It’s amazing what can be accomplished without red tape!” Or the mom who explains that she’s home-schooling her kids because “I wouldn’t put them in an educational system that doesn’t teach them to think.” That’s maybe the coolest thing about this particular utopia: Everyone speaks in Republican National Committee talking points.
Unfortunately, Dagny has to leave paradise before she even gets to have sex with John Galt, because the government has nationalized her train company and is running it into the ground. Bummer. In fact, the entire country is falling to pieces without men like Galt, who is both a brilliant engineer and a professional hair model. But that serves America right because, as Galt explains, “the powerful try to make us feel guilty for our success.” And that is so totally not cool.
Alas, Dagny leaves the valley and heads back to grubby old America and it’s just as poorly lit and effed-up as you’d expect, though she does get to have sex with John Galt (who comes to rescue her), an act of coitus that is performed on her desk. This sort of eases the comedown of living in a reeking dystopia.
Then John Galt gives a big speech on TV during which he asks some tough questions of the American people, who are mostly huddled outside pawn shops staring at televisions through the security bars. “Have you noticed that as everything in your world seems to decline, one thing still grows?” he asks. Everyone kind of nods. “It is the power of your rulers. None of their plans and directives have solved your problems or made your life better. The only result has been the increased control over you at the cost of your freedom.” He goes on to explain how business leaders got tired of being called “greedy exploiters” and decided to follow him. Why? Because they finally “recognized the honor they deserved and rebelled against the guilt you wanted them to feel.”
It’s not exactly “The Gettysburg Address,” but the media response is off the charts. Sean Hannity appears on-screen, looking engorged with gravitas. He loves the speech. Glenn Beck salutes Galt’s moxy. Ron Paul arises from his Cycronic crypt to predict the End Times, which is sort of a reflex at this point. The crowds outside the pawn shops start chanting John Galt’s name. It’s a movement.
Naturally, government thugs capture Galt and drag him to a secret lab where they strip off his shirt and punish him using their special new Torture Machine, which involves a lot of sparks. Galt looks a lot like Jesus Christ, if you can imagine Christ with stubble and chinos. But then Dagny and her pals rescue Galt and all the ubermenschen fly off together to their mountain hideaway where, Rush is pretty sure, they eventually build a PGA-quality golf course and hire Playboy Bunnies to wax your balls.
Except — spoiler alert! — Rush wakes up before this last part can happen. Worse yet, he has diarrhea. The beautiful thing is that even in the midst of his diarrhea, Rush is able to get online and right there in his email in-box is an invitation to the premiere of the new film, “Atlas Shrugged III.”
And now El Rushbo realizes why his dream felt so gosh darned familiar: because it’s the plot of the third and final part of Ayn Rand’s 1957 potboiler, which will debut tomorrow, Sept. 12, mostly in those precincts of the country where citizens still call the Civil War the War of Northern Aggression.
If this were an actual movie review I would, at this point, pretend to give a shit about the film’s quality. But as anyone who sits through “Atlas Shrugged III” will tell you, the filmmakers themselves don’t give a shit about the film’s quality.
Back in 2011, when the first installment came out, most reviewers agreed to regard it as a “major motion picture,” though it was funded not by a studio but by an exercise machine mogul named John Aglialoro. As a piece of art, and a form of entertainment, “Atlas Shrugged I” flopped hard.
But if there’s one thing the conservative movement of this country has proved, it’s that it can move even the most imaginatively inert product. With the ardent promotional support of Fox News and the Tea Party’s corporate arm, the film managed to earn out in video. And thus we got a second “Atlas,” with an all-new cast and even lower production values. This final chapter has an exhausted, obligatory air. It’s like watching the final phases of a botched plastic surgery.
The director — and co-writer — is a man named James Manera, whose previous work includes a documentary about music and an episode of the television show “Nash Bridges,” which he directed in 1996. I think I’ve said enough about the movie.
The larger curiosity here is Ayn Rand herself. It would be easy to write her off as a demented Cold War hack no longer relevant to our cultural and political discourse. But that would be a huge mistake. Because Rand’s slobbering conception of laissez-faire capitalism is not only alive and well, it remains a galvanizing ideological force.
Consider the young darling of conservative circles, former vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan. Ryan worships Rand. He once gave a speech confessing that he went into public service because of her. He also asked his staffers to read her novels, so they could learn about the free market. During the 2012 campaign, Ryan did a good job of playing down his devotion, because Rand was an atheist.
But her fingerprints are all over his famous Budget Plan. To the “takers” in our society — the aged and the sick — Ryan would provide rationed healthcare. Federal budgets for education, transportation, energy and veteran services would be slashed. The rich, meanwhile, would be handed billions in tax cuts.
The whole idea is to do like John Galt says: obliterate any restraints on personal greed. The Ryan Plan is a document so enthusiastic in its fraudulence, so casual in its cruelty, and so certain of its own virtue that it could only have been dreamed up by a man born into money, educated by Ayn Rand, and given finishing lessons in Congress.
For all the low-budget absurdity of this new movie, the famous speech Rand penned for John Galt back in 1957 still stands as the Rosetta Stone of modern conservatism. This country wasn’t built by men who sought handouts! Sweep aside those parasites of subsidized classrooms! On and on Galt yammers, forever propelled by grievance and self-pity.
His vision of capitalism is a cartoon that plays over and over again on Fox News: no poverty or environmental ruin or lack of equal opportunity. Mercy is a mug’s game in this world, a false impulse. The pursuit of wealth, by contrast, is a form of heroic purity. If only bureaucrats would get out of the way, our intrepid industrialists would beat a path to paradise and leave the moochers to rot. Rand’s mission — now taken up by Ryan and company — is to present capitalism not as an economic philosophy, but an impeccable moral system.
The writer and critic Gore Vidal characterized the philosophy of Ayn Rand as “nearly perfect in its immorality” and a number of critics described “Atlas Shrugged” (the novel) as a narrative driven by hate.
But my take on the book, as well as the movies it spawned, is just the opposite. For all the contempt that Rand (and Galt and Ryan) aim at the government, the predominant emotion they express is one of unbridled self-love. Rand herself was a kind of golem of narcissistic excess, a woman with delusions of grandeur. And she tapped into the crushing insecurity of the wealthy, the manner in which they must constantly remind themselves how much they deserve their privilege.
What animates these people and drives their chintzy propaganda isn’t rage at all, but a kind of annihilating self-hatred.
Rush is going to love “Atlas Shrugged III.”
It’s not just a movie to him. It’s a dream come true.
That is just hilarious! Amazingly short-sighted, ignorant, presumptuous, and impossibly foolish—a piece of work which belongs exclusively to Steve Almond and Salon Magazine. Please visit their site at the link provided. They likely need the web traffic, so help them out with some pity for the good laugh.
Given my recent comments about the importance of mythology, it should come as no surprise when I do these occasional articles about the Star Wars Miniatures game, X-wing. It is a participatory mythology that is a real step up from the old days of exclusively verbal and written myth. As a strategy game it has a real power to it that never ceases to impress me—as a creative endeavor. I find it an amazing game which I play often. With that said, within the game I have a new love which nearly mimics the response of a new ship called the E-wing from the video below. The Millennium Falcon, which is my favorite ship, now has a rival, the E-Wing fighter has become a close second. A ship for the Rebellion, it is their best offering and fits nicely within a 100 point squad at the lowest pilot rating or the highest which features Corran Horn—one of my favorite Star Wars characters. For anybody who has played the game, the reaction of Steven should not come as a surprise once they have been used in a combat engagement.
I thought the Fantasy Flight Games inclusion of the E-wing was interesting. They have to get all their designs approved through Lucas Licensing—who already knows the contents of the new Star Wars films. Corran Horn and the E-Wing in general are exclusively creations of the Expanded Universe which supposedly Lucasfilm is abandoning with Disney’s urging. I am not one of those people who believe that Disney is scrapping the EU—as the media currently advocates. In fact, I think I know the entire plot—at least how Episode VII begins—but I’m not going to trample on what the filmmakers are trying to do. They are deliberately creating rumors to throw people off the truth of the film’s plot—so it is important to them to maintain that for their own reasons. So don’t believe what the media is reporting—because most of it is wrong. To confirm my beliefs about Episode VII, the inclusion of the E-Wing to the game X-wing speaks loudly about how much value the EU will maintain in the creation of further Star Wars stories. The E-wing was a ship that Corran Horn flew with Rogue Squadron several years after the initial Star Wars films and are comfortably into the years following the original trilogy, which delights me as to how it fits into the overall mythology. But the ship itself is one of the best that the rebels have. All Rebel squads should include at least one after I have spent some considerable time using them.
For those who do not know much about the E-wing this Wiki article should shine some light on how they fit into the EU story. The E-wing escort starfighter was a single-pilotstarfighter developed by FreiTek Inc. It was the first fighter designed entirely under the support of the New Republic.
As designed, the E-wing was intended to match, or exceed, the performance of the preceding X-wing series in nearly every respect, and was originally intended to replace the older design in New Republic service. However, the craft suffered from some significant problems when first deployed among front-line squadrons, including malfunction issues with the laser cannons and the new R7 astromech units. As a result, many pilots continued to fly upgraded versions of the venerable X-wing.
Despite the initial problems, improved models of the E-wing would see wide-spread use by the New Republic, particularly by the Fifth Fleet, and later by the Galactic Alliance. They would play a significant role in every engagement from the Black Fleet Crisis, through the Yuuzhan Vong War, and beyond.
By the time of the Second Galactic Civil War, the E-wing had matured into an excellent starfighter design and equipped several elite squadrons of the Galactic Alliance. However, it never achieved the same popularity or wide-spread use as the X-wing.
The E-wing was considered an excellent combination of firepower, maneuverability, speed, and armor, but initial models required the use of the R7-series astromech droid, which was exclusively built for the E-wing.
The spaceframe of the E-wing was surrounded by two aerodynamic foils which provided stability and increased weapons ability. The nosecone contained the starfighter’s powerful sensors, while a concealed astromech droid could easily be positioned midway through the craft. Directly in front of the astromech slot was the cockpit.
The fighter was heavily armed with three laser cannons and oneproton torpedo launcher with a magazine of sixteen torpedoes. Like most Rebel designs, the lasers were spread out and could be set to converge at varying distances.
Much of the great cost of the E-wing came from the use of the R7 droid, a much more sophisticated and expensive astromech than the classic R2 and R5 astromechs. Later models of the E-wing starfighters were however able to interface with earlier astromech models, such as an R2 or R5 unit.
The Republic introduced the E-wing during Grand AdmiralThrawn‘s campaign to rebuild the fallenEmpire. The fighter later served in the fight against the “resurrected” Palpatine. Built with cutting-edge weapons, shielding, and propulsion systems, the fighter was extremely powerful and well-rounded. It was intended as an escort fighter and could also serve as a medium-range assault craft. It had enough speed to counter TIE/In starfighters and had better armor than other New Republic starfighters, including the X-wing. They were used by the Galactic Federation of Free Alliances during the Second Galactic Civil War, during early skirmishes with Corellia.
The E-wing had some initial teething problems relating to the placement of the wing lasers near the outboard engines. The synthetic Tibanna used for the lasers tended to degrade at accelerated rates, which swiftly rendered those guns near-useless (and cutting gun firepower to a third). Rebel engineers came up with a temporary solution during the World Devastator assault on Mon Calamari. Those problems were eventually resolved and the fighter entered fleet service. It is known to have served at least with the New Republic’s Fifth Fleet as the primary fleet space superiority fighter. When the Fifth Fleet was moved to the Koornacht Cluster during the Black Fleet Crisis, many E-wings saw action against the Yevetha in the conflict that ensued.
Four major models appeared to have been designed; the last (Series IV) was introduced around the time of the capture of Coruscant by the Yuuzhan Vong. By that point in the war, the XJ X-wing was rapidly equipping most squadrons in the massive military expansion; the more sophisticated E-wing may have been limited to some elite squadrons. The Series IV E-wing remained in service through the transition from New Republic to Galactic Alliance, and was still in operation as of the Second Galactic Civil War.
During the era of the New Republic the Rogue Squadron was expanded vastly, turned into a multi-fighter unit based around E-wings and B-wings, and based on Lusankya, which Antilles departed the squadron to command, leaving Celchu as Rogue Leader. This unit first saw combat conquering Phaeda.[30] Shortly after that campaign, the last leaders of the unified Empire were defeated, and the former galactic power dissolved into warlordism.[29] Horn stayed and weathered these changes, which were only temporary, as the squadron was back in X-wings and at regular strength within the year.[8]
After reading all that it is quickly evident that if Disney were abandoning the EU, they would not have approved the inclusion of the E-wing into the canon of the X-wing Miniatures game. The game will continue selling for years and once the story is out upon the release of the new Star Wars film, the market potential for a non canon ship would be extremely weak. There is just too much story and history present to abandon those stories in favor of an alternate timeline within the Star Wars Universe. Time will tell the truth but for now, the E-wing is encouraging and brings with it a very rich history directly from the EU. There is so much potential for Disney and Lucasfilm to explode their merchandising base off the EU it would seem evident that the E-wing is just the tip of an iceberg. There should be much more to come. It is possible the decision to use the E-wing was exclusively to milk everything that could be milked to bring forth new ships for the hot selling strategy game, but as important as story has always been, and will always be in Star Wars—the E-wing is an exciting inclusion that points to wonderful things on the horizon.
For one of my nephews, Corran Horn was his favorite character created during an Expanded Universe novel series called X-wing. Corran would later become a Jedi Knight under Luke Skywalker and eventually serve on the council being a big part of the Yuuzhan Vong War. The literature produced for Star Wars far exceeds the content of the movies, so watching those EU elements percolate into the gaming world is a lot of fun.
Strategically speaking however, the E-wing is one of the best ships made in the game. It is a must for any collector and player. I doubt ever again I will create a squad of ships that does not in some way include an E-wing—they are just too powerful and nimble not to. I have spent many hours dazzled by mine and enjoyed the immense game play that they bring to a table. But what is most fun of all is knowing that the X-wing game is reflecting all the wonderful aspects of that larger world which is the Expanded Universe. While reporters are hinging on every morsel of information and scrap photo taken from the paparazzi about the new Episode VII movie, some of the best secrets are those hidden in plain site. Behind the E-wing are the answers that many Star Wars fans are looking for. Nobody is hiding the information, it’s there for all to see—if you know a little about the mythology of Star Wars—and in our house, we have one room full of every Star Wars book ever written, then its obvious. Nobody in the business of making money—which Disney is—would let those rich stories fall into decline and disrespect. The E-wing is a part of the EU that is very important only to the values of events after the movie Return of the Jedi. And it was given a dominate role in X-wing which greatly enhances the game play. Needless to say, Steven was right about that ship—it is a thing of wonder and beauty for more reasons than that it gives players a strategic advantage. It is a member of the cherished EU and hopefully a sign of great things to come.
The only way to measure the level of socialism that is in America today is to go to the source when communism was advocated around the world by Joseph Stalin and socialism by President Roosevelt. In 2014 and beyond socialism has become so much a part of people’s lives right down to their Social Security cards and their public schools. They accept socialism as a reality against pure market capitalism. Unfortunately the argument over time has been captured by those opposed to capitalism for so long that they changed the rules and the dialogue to what is now accepted. So to understand how much and to what degree you must go back to the source. One of the best ways to understand the vehement desire for global socialism by second-hander types—especially in America is to study the beliefs of the popular science fiction writer H.G. Wells and the leader of communist Russia. Below is an interview conducted by Wells of Stalin taken in 1937, before World War II became the defining premise of fascism—hiding the full impact of communism from the world for several decades behind an iron curtain. It is hard to enter a public school these days without finding the praise of H.G. Wells somewhere within it, and many do not understand to what degree an advocate of socialism he was—and used his popularity to advance socialism and liberalism among other writers. But by reading the interview below, which is long, you will see how many of the ridiculous beliefs that society has today were shaped by these two men. In contrast, once you have read the following interview, read the warning by Ayn Rand, Walt Disney and many others during the 30s and 40s about the spread of communism and socialism in America to see that the battles fought against collectivism did not take place in World War II, Korea, or Vietnam—but took place in our back yards without a single bullet shot. And America lost that war…….CLICK HERE TO REVIEW.
Read below to grapple with the chilling words of H.G. Wells and Joseph Stalin together and openly speaking about the advance of socialism across the globe against capitalists. Then and only then will it become understood how much ground socialists gained in America while nobody paid any attention for over 80 years of subtle erosion against creativity and productivity in the United States free market society.
Joseph Stalin and H. G. Wells, Marxism VS. Liberalism: An Interview
EXHIBIT No. 44
[New York, New Century Publishers, September 1937; reprinted October 1950. Joseph Stalin and H. G. Wells, Marxism VS. Liberalism: An Interview.]
NOTE H. G. Wells visited the Soviet Union in 1934 and on July 23 he inter¬viewed Joseph Stalin. The conversation, lasting from 4 P. M. to 6:50 P. M., was recorded by Constantine Oumansky, then head of the Press Bureau of the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs. The text, as printed in this pamphlet, has been approved by Mr. Wells.
WELLS: I am very much obliged to you, Mr. Stalin, for agreeing to see me. I was in the United States recently. I had a long conversation With President Roosevelt and tried to ascertain what his leading ideas were. Now I have come to you to ask you what you are doing to change the world. . . .
STALIN: Not so very much. . . .
WELLS: I wander around the world as a common man and, as a common man, observe what is going on around me.
STALIN: Important public men like yourself are not “common men.” Of course, history alone can show how important this or that public man has been; at all events you do not look at the world as a “common man.”
WELLS: I am not pretending humility. What I mean is that I try to see the world through the eyes of the common man, and not as a party politician or a responsible administrator. My visit to the United States excited my mind. The old financial world is collapsing; the economic life of the country is being reorganized on new lines. Lenin said: “We must learn to do business,” learn this from the capitalists. Today the capitalists have to learn from you, to grasp the spirit of socialism. It seems to me that what is taking place in the United States is a profound reorganization, the creation of planned, that is, socialist, economy. You and Roosevelt begin from two different starting points. But is there not a relation in ideas, a kinship of ideas, between Washington and Moscow? In Washington I was struck by the same thing I see going on here; they are building offices, they are creating a number of new state regulation bodies, they are organizing a long-needed Civil Service. Their need, like yours, is directive ability. STALIN: The United States is pursuing a different aim from that which we are pursuing in the U.S.S.R. The aim which the Americans are pursuing arose out of the economic troubles, out of the economic crisis. The Americans want to rid themselves of the crisis on the basis of private capitalist activity without changing the economic basis. They are trying to reduce to a minimum the ruin, the losses caused by the existing economic system. Here, however, as you know, in place of the old destroyed economic basis an entirely different, a new economic basis has been created. Even if the Americans you mention partly achieve their aim, i.e., reduce these losses to a minimum, they will not destroy the roots of the anarchy which is inherent in the existing capitalist system. They are preserving the economic system which must inevitably lead, and cannot but lead, to anarchy in production. Thus, at best, it will be a matter, not of the reorganization of society, not of abolishing the old social system which gives rise to anarchy and crises, but of restricting certain of its bad
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features, restricting certain of its excesses. Subjectively, perhaps, these Americans think they are reorganizing society; objectively, however, they are preserving the present basis of society. That is why, objectively, there will be no reorganization of society. Nor will there be planned economy. What is planned economy? What are some of its attributes? Planned economy tries to abolish unemployment. Let us suppose it is possible, while preserving the capitalist system, to reduce unemployment to a certain minimum. But surely, no capitalist would ever agree to the complete abolition of unemployment, to the abolition of the reserve army of unemployed, the purpose of which is to bring pressure on the labor market, to ensure a supply of cheap labor. Here you have one of the rents in the “planned economy” of bourgeois society. Furthermore, planned economy presupposes increased output in those branches of industry which produce goods that the masses of the people need particularly. But you know that the expansion of production under capitalism takes place for entirely different motives, that capital flows into those branches of economy in which the rate of profit is highest. You will never compel a capitalist to incur loss to himself and agree to a lower rate of profit for the sake of satisfying the needs of the people. Without getting rid of the capitalists, without abolishing the principle of private property in the means of production, it is impossible to create planned economy.
WELLS: I agree with much of what you have said. But I would like to stress the point that if a country as a whole adopts the principle of planned economy, if the government, gradually, step by step, begins consistently to apply this principle, the financial oligarchy will at last be abolished and socialism, in the Anglo-Saxon meaning of the word, will be brought about. The effect of the ideas of Roosevelt’s “New Deal” is most powerful, and in my opinion they are socialist ideas. It seems to me that instead of stressing the antagonism between the two worlds, we should, in the present circumstances, strive to establish a common tongue for all the constructive forces.
STALIN: In speaking of the impossibility of realizing the principles of planned economy while preserving the economic basis of capitalism I do not in the least desire to belittle the outstanding personal qualities of Roosevelt, his initiative, courage, and determination. Undoubtedly Roosevelt stands out as one of the strongest figures among all the captains of the contemporary capitalist world. That is why I would like once again to emphasize the point that my conviction that planned economy is impossible under the conditions of capitalism does not mean that I have any doubts about the personal abilities, talent, and courage of President Roosevelt. But if the circumstances are unfavorable, the most talented captain cannot reach the goal you refer to. Theoretically, of course, the possibility of marching gradually, step by step, under the conditions of capitalism, towards the goal which you call socialism in the Anglo-Saxon meaning of the word, is not precluded. But what will this “socialism” be? At best, bridling to some extent the most unbridled of individual representatives of capitalist profit, some increase in the application of the principle of regulation in national economy. That is all very well. But as soon as Roosevelt, or any other captain in the contemporary bourgeois world, proceeds to undertake something serious against the foundation of capitalism, he will inevitably suffer utter defeat.
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The banks, the industries, the large enterprises, the large farms are not in Roosevelt’s hands. All these are private property. The rail¬roads, the mercantile fleet, all these belong to private owners. And finally, the army of skilled workers, the engineers, the technicians, these too are not at Roosevelt’s command, they are at the command of the private owners; they all work for the private owners. We must not forget the functions of the State in the bourgeois world. The State is an institution that organizes the defense of the country, organizes the maintenance of “order”; it is an apparatus for collecting taxes. The capitalist State does not deal much with economy in the strict sense of the word; the latter is not in the hands of the State. On the contrary, the State is in the hands of capitalist economy. That is why I fear that, in spite of all his energy and abilities, Roosevelt will not achieve the goal you mention, if indeed that is his goal. Perhaps, in the course of several generations, it will be possible to approach this goal somewhat; but I personally think that even this is not very probable. .
WELLS: Perhaps I believe more strongly in the economic interpretation of politics than you do. Huge forces driving towards better organization, for the better functioning of the community, that is, for socialism, have been brought into action by invention and modern science. Organization, and the regulation of individual action, have become mechanical necessities, irrespective of social theories. If we begin with the State control of the banks. and then follow with the control of transport, of the heavy industries, of industry in general, of commerce, etc., such an all-embracing control will be equivalent to the State ownership of all branches of national economy. This will be the process of socialization. Socialism and individualism are not opposites like black and white. There are many intermediate stages between them. There is individualism that borders on brig¬andage, and there is discipline and organization that are the equiva¬lent of socialism. The introduction of planned economy depends, to a large degree, upon the organizers of economy, upon the skilled technical intelligentsia, who, step by step, can be converted to the socialist principles of organization. And this is the most important thing. Because organization comes before socialism. It is the more important fact. Without organization the socialist idea is a mere idea.
STALIN: There is no, nor should there be, irreconcilable contrast between the individual and the collective, between the interests of the individual person and the interests of the collective, There should be no such contrast, because collectivism, socialism, does not deny, but combines individual interests with the interests of the collective. Socialism cannot abstract itself from individual interests. Socialist society alone can most fully satisfy these personal interests. More than that; socialist society alone can firmly safeguard the interests of the individual. In this sense there is no irreconcilable contrast between “individualism” and socialism. But can we deny the contrast between classes, between the propertied class, the capitalist class, and the toiling class, the proletarian class? On the one hand we have the propertied class which owns the banks, the factories, the mines, transport, the plantations in colonies. These people see nothing but their own interests, their striving after profits. They do not submit to the will of the collective; they strive to subordinate every collective to their will. On the other hand we have
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the class of the poor, the exploited Class, which owns neither factories nor works, nor banks, which is compelled to live by selling its labor power to the capitalists and which lacks the opportunity to satisfy its most elementary requirements. How can such opposite interests and strivings be reconciled? As far as I know, Roosevelt has not succeeded in finding the path of conciliation between these interests. And it is impossible, as experience has shown. Incidentally, you know the situation in the United States better than I do as I have never been there and I watch American affairs mainly from literature. But I have some experience in fighting for socialism and this experience tells me that if Roosevelt makes a real attempt to satisfy the interests of the proletarian class at the expense of the capitalist class, the latter will put another president in his place. The capitalists will say: Presidents come and presidents go, but we go on forever; if this or that president does not protect our interests, we shall find another. What can the president oppose to the will of the capitalist class?
WELLS: I object to this simplified classification of mankind into poor and rich. Of course there is a category of people which strives only for profit. But are not these people regarded as nuisances in the West just as much as here? Are there not plenty of people in the West for whom profit is not an end, who own a certain amount of wealth, who want to invest and obtain a profit from this investment, but who do not regard this as the main object? They regard invest¬ment as an inconvenient necessity. Are there not plenty of capable and devoted engineers, organizers of industry, whose activities are stimulated by something other than profit? In my opinion there is a numerous class of capable people who admit that the present system is unsatisfactory. and who are destined to playa great role in future socialist society. During the past few years I have been much engaged in and have thought of the need for conducting propaganda in favor of socialism and cosmopolitanism among wide circles of engineers, airmen, military-technical people, etc. It is useless approaching these circles with two track class war propaganda. These people understand the condition of the world. They understand that it is a bloody muddle, but they regard your simple class¬war antagonism as nonsense.
STALIN: You object to the simplified classification of mankind into rich and poor. Of course there is a middle stratum, there is the technical intelligentsia that you have mentioned and among which there are very good and very honest people. Among them there are also dishonest and wicked people, there are all sorts of people among them. But first of all mankind is divided into. rich and poor, into property owners and exploited; and to abstract oneself from this fundamental division and from the antagonism between poor and rich means abstracting oneself from the fundamental fact. I do not deny the existence of intermediate, middle strata, which either take the side of one or other of these two conflicting classes, or else take up a neutral or semineutral position in this struggle. But, I repeat, to abstract oneself from this fundamental division in society and from the fundamental struggle between the two main classes means ignoring facts. This struggle is going on and will continue. The outcome of the struggle will be determined by the proletarian class, the working class.
WELLS: But are there not many people who are not poor, but who work and work productively? .
STALIN: Of course, there are small landowners, artisans, small traders, but it is not these people who decide the fate of a country, but the toiling masses, who produce all the things society requires.
WELLS: But there are very different kinds of capitalists. There are capitalists who only think about profit, about getting rich; but there are also those who are prepared to make sacrifices. Take old Morgan for example. He only thought about profit; he was a parasite on society, simply, he merely accumulated wealth. But take Rocke¬feller. He is a brilliant organizer; he has set an example of how to organize the delivery of oil that is worthy of emulation. Or take Ford. Of course Ford is selfish. But is he not a passionate organizer of rationalized production from whom you take lessons? I would like to emphasize the fact that recently an important change in opinion towards the U.S.S.R. has taken place in English speaking countries. The reason for this, first of all, is the position of Japan and the events in Germany. But there are other reasons besides those arising from international politics. There is a more profound reason, namely, the recognition by many people of the fact that the system based on private profit is breaking down. Under these circumstances, it seems to me, we must not bring to the forefront the antagonism between the two worlds, but should strive to combine all the constructive movements, all the constructive forces in one line as much as possible. It seems to me that I am more to the Left than you, Mr. Stalin; I think the old system is nearer to its end than you think.
STALIN: In speaking of the capitalists who strive only for profit, only to get rich, I do not want to say that these are the most worthless people, capable of nothing else. Many of them undoubtedly possess great organizing talent, Which I do not dream of denying. We Soviet people learn a great deal from the capitalists. And Morgan, whom you characterize so unfavorably, was undoubtedly a good, capable organizer. But if you mean people who are prepared to reconstruct the world, of course, you will not be able to find them in the ranks of those who faithfully serve the cause of profit. We and they stand at opposite poles. You mentioned Ford. Of course, he is a capable organizer of production. But don’t you know his attitude towards the working class? Don’t you know how many workers he throws on the street? The capitalist is riveted to profit; and no power on earth can tear him away from it. Capitalism will be abolished, not, by “organizers” of production, not by the technical intelligentsia, but by the working class, because the aforementioned strata do not play an independent role. The engineer, the organizer of production, does not work as he would like to, but as he is ordered, in such a way as to serve the interests of his employers. There are exceptions of course; there are people in this stratum who have awakened from the intoxication of capitalism the technical intelligentsia can, under certain conditions, perform miracles and greatly benefit mankind. But It can also cause great harm. We Soviet people have not a little experience of the technical intelligentsia. After the October Revolution, a certain section of the technical intelligentsia refused to take part in the work of constructing the new society; they opposed this work of construction and sabotaged it. We did all we possibly could to bring the technical intelligentsia into this work of construction
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we tried this way and that. Not a little time passed before our technical intelligentsia agreed actively to assist the new system. Today the best section of this technical intelligentsia are in the front rank of the builders of socialist society. Having this experience, we are far from underestimating the good and the bad sides of the technical intelligentsia and we know that on the one hand it can do harm, and on the other hand, it can perform “miracles.” Of course, things would be different if it were possible, at one stroke, spiritually to tear the technical intelligentsia away from the capitalist world. But that is utopia. Are there many of the technical intelligentsia who would dare break away from the bourgeois world and set to work to reconstruct society? Do you think there are many people of this kind, say, in England or in France? No, there are few who would be willing to break away from their employers and begin reconstructing the world. Besides, can we lose sight of the fact that in order to transform the world it is necessary’to have political power? It seems to me, Mr. Wells, that you greatly underestimate the question of political power, that it entirely drops out of your conception. What can those, even with the best intentions in the world, do if they are unable to raise the question of seizing power, and do not possess power? At best they can help the class which takes power, but they cannot change the world themselves. This can only be done by a great class which will take the place of the capitalist class and become the sovereign master as the latter was before. This class is the working class. Of course, the assistance of the technical intelligentsia must be accepted; and the latter, in turn, must be assisted. But it must not be thought that the technical intelligentsia can play an independent historical role. The transformation of the world is a great, complicated and painful process. For this great task a great class is required. Big ships go on long voyages.
WELLS: Yes, but for long voyages a captain and a navigator are required.
STALIN: That is true; but what is first required for a long voyage is a big ship. What is a navigator without a ship? An idle man.
WELLS: The big ship is humanity, not a class.
STALIN: You, Mr. Wells, evidently start out with the assumption that all men are good. I, however, do not forget that there are many wicked men. I do not believe in the goodness of the bourgeoisie.
WELLS: I remember the situation with regard to the technical intelligentsia several decades ago. At that time the technical intelli¬gentsia was numerically small, but there was much to do and every engineer, technician and intellectual found his opportunity. That is why the technical intelligentsia was the least revolutionary class. Now, however, there is a superabundance of technical intellectuals, and their mentality has changed very sharply. The skilled man, who would formerly never listen to revolutionary talk, is now greatly interested in it. Recently I was dining with the Royal Society, our great English scientific society. The President’s speech was a speech for social planning and scientific control. Thirty years ago, they would not have listened to what I say to them now. Today, the man at the head of the Royal Society holds revolutionary views and insists on the scientific reorganization of human society. Mentality changes. Your class-war propaganda has not. kept pace with these facts.
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STALIN : Yes, I know this, and this is to be explained by the fact that capitalist society is now in a cul-de-sac. The capitalists are seeking, but cannot find, a way out of this cul-de-sac that would be compatible with the dignity of this class, compatible with the interests of this class. They could, to some extent, crawl out of the crisis on their hands and knees, but they cannot find an exit that would enable them to walk out of it with head raised high, a way out that would not. fundamentally disturb the interests of capitalism. This, of course, is realized by wide circles of the technical intelligentsia. A large section of it is beginning to realize the community of its interests with those of the class which is capable of pointing the way out of the cul-de-sac.
WELLS: You of all people know something about revolutions, Mr. Stalin, from the practical side. Do the masses ever rise? Is it not an established truth that all revolutions are made by a minority?
STALIN: To bring about a revolution a leading revolutionary minority is required; but the most talented, devoted and energetic minority would be helpless if it did not rely upon the at least passive support of millions.
WELLS: At least passive? Perhaps sub-conscious?
STALIN: Partly also the semi-instinctive and semiconscious, but without the support of millions, the best minority is impotent.
WELLS: I watch communist propaganda in the West and it seems to me that in modern conditions this propaganda sounds very old¬fashioned, because it is insurrectionary propaganda. Propaganda in favor of the violent overthrow of the social system ,was all very well when it was directed against tyranny. But under modern conditions, when the system is collapsing anyhow, stress should be laid on efficiency, on competence, on productiveness, and not on insurrection. It seems to me that the insurrectionary note is obsolete. The communist propaganda in the West is a nuisance to constructive minded people.
STALIN: Of course the old system is breaking down, decaying. That is true. But it is also true that new efforts are being made by other methods, by every means, to protect, to save this dying system. You draw a wrong conclusion from a correct postulate. You rightly state that the old world is breaking down. But you are wrong in thinking that it is breaking down of its own accord No, the substitution of one social system for another is a complicated and long revolutionary process. It is not simply a spontaneous process, but a struggle, it is a process connected with the clash of classes. Capitalism is decaying, but it must not be compared simply with a tree which has decayed to such an extent that it must fall to the ground of its own accord. No, revolution, the substitution of one social system for another, has always been a struggle, a painful and a cruel struggle, a life and death struggle. And every time the people of the new world came into power, they had to defend themselves against the attempts of the old world to restore the old order by force; these people of the new world always had to be on the alert, always had to be ready to repel the attacks of the old world upon the new system. Yes, you are right when you say that the old social system is breaking down; but it is not breaking down of its own accord. Take Fascism for example. Fascism is a reactionary force which is trying to preserve the old world by means of violence. What will you do
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with the fascists? Argue with them? Try to convince them? But this will have no effect upon them at all. Communists do not in the least idealize the methods of violence. But they, the Communists, do not want to be taken by surprise, they cannot count on the old world voluntarily departing from the stage, they see that the old system is violently defending itself, and that is why the Communists say to the working class: Answer violence with violence; do all you can to prevent the old dying order from crushing you, do ,not permit it to put manacles on your hands, on the hands with which you will overthrow the old system. As you see, the Communists regard the substitution of one social system for another, not simply as a spontaneous and peaceful process, but as a complicated, long and violent process. Communists cannot ignore facts.
WELLS: But look at what is now going on in the capitalist world. The collapse is not a simple one: it is the outbreak of reactionary violence which is degenerating to gangsterism. And it seems to me that when it comes to a conflict with reactionary and unintelligent violence, socialists can appeal to the law, and instead of regarding the police as the enemy they should support them in the fight against the reactionaries. I think that it is useless operating with the methods of the old rigid insurrectionary socialism.
STALIN: The Communists base themselves on rich historical experience which teaches that obsolete classes do not voluntarily abandon the stage of history. Recall the history of England in the seventeenth century. Did not many say that the old social system had decayed? But did it not, nevertheless, require a Cromwell to crush it by force?
WELLS: Cromwell operated on the basis of the constitution and in the name of constitutional order.
STALIN: In the name of the constitution he resorted to violence, beheaded the king, dispersed Parliament, arrested some and beheaded others! Or take an example from our history. Was it not clear for a long time that the tsarist system was decaying, was breaking down? But how much blood had to be shed in order to overthrow it? And what about the October Revolution? Were there not plenty of people who knew that we alone, the Bolsheviks, were indicating the only correct way out? Was it not clear that Russian capitalism had decayed? But you know how great was the resistance, how much blood had to be shed in order to defend the October Revolution from all its enemies, internal and external. Or take France at the end of the eighteenth century. Long before 1789 it was clear to many how rotten the royal power, the feudal system was. But a popular insurrection, a clash of classes was not, ,could not be avoided. Why? Because the classes which must abandon the stage of history are the last to become convinced that their role is ended. It is impossible to convince them of this. They think that the fissures in the decaying edifice of the old order can be mended, that the tottering edifice of the old order can be repaired and saved. That is why dying classes take to arms and resort to every means to save their existence as a ruling class.
WELLS: But there were not a few lawyers at the head of the Great French Revolution.
STALIN: Do you deny the role of the intelligentsia in revolutionary movements? Was the Great French Revolution a lawyers’ revolution and not a popular revolution, which achieved victory by rousing vast masses of the people against feudalism and championed the interests of the Third Estate? And did the lawyers among the leaders of the Great French Revolution act in accordance with the laws of the old order? Did they not introduce new, bourgeois-revolutionary laws? The rich experience of history teaches that up to now not a single class has voluntarily made way for another class. There is no such precedent in world history. The Communists have learned this lesson of history. Communists would welcome the voluntary departure of the bourgeoisie. But such a turn of affairs is improbable: that is what experience teaches. That is why the Communists want to be prepared for the worst and call upon the working class to be vigilant, to be prepared for battle. Who wants a captain who lulls the vigilance of his army, a captain who does not understand that the enemy will not surrender, that he must be crushed? To be such a captain means deceiving, betraying the working class. That is why r think that what seems to you to be old-fashioned is in fact a measure of revolutionary expediency for the working class.
WELLS: I do not deny that force has to be used, but I think the forms of the struggle should fit as closely as possible to the opportunities presented by the existing laws, which must be defended against reactionary attacks. There is no need to disorganize the old system because it is’ disorganizing itself enough as it is. That is why it seems to me insurrection against the old order, against the law, is<‘obsolete, old-fashioned. Incidentally, I deliberately exaggerate in order to bring the truth out more clearly. I can formulate my point of view in the following way: first, I am for order; second, I attack the present system in so far as it cannot assure order: third, I think that class war propaganda may detach from socialism just those educated people whom socialism needs.
STALIN: In order to achieve a great object, an important social object, there must be a main force, a bulwark, a revolutionary class. Next it is necessary to organize the assistance of an auxiliary force for this main force: in this case this auxiliary force is the Party, to which the best forces of the intelligentsia belong. Just now you spoke about “educated people;” But what educated people did you have in mind? Were there not plenty of educated people on the side of the old order in England in the seventeenth century, in France at the end of the eighteenth century, and in Russia in the epoch of the October Revolution? The old order: had in its service many highly educated people who defended the old order, who opposed the new order. Education is a weapon the effect of which be struck down. Of course, the proletariat, socialism, needs is determined by the hands which wield it, by who is to highly educated people. Clearly, simpletons cannot help the proletariat to fight for socialism, to build a new society. I do not underestimate the role of the intelligentsia; on the contrary, emphasize it. The question is, however, which intelligentsia are we discussing? Because there are different kinds of intelligentsia.
WELLS: There can be no revolution without a radical change in the educational system. It is sufficient to quote two examples: The example of the German Republic, which did not touch the old educational system, and therefore never became a republic: and the example
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of the British Labor Party, which lacks the determination to insist on a radical change in the educational system.
STALIN: That is a correct observation. Permit me now to reply to, your three points. First, the main thing for the revolution is the existence of a social bulwark. This bulwark of the revolution is the working class. Second, an auxiliary force is required, that which the Communists call a Party. To the Party belong the intelligent workers and those elements of the technical intelligentsia which are closely connected with the working class. The intelligentsia can be strong only if it combines with the working class. If it opposes the working class it becomes a cipher. Third, political power is required as a lever for change. The new political power creates the new laws, the new order, which is revolutionary order. I do not stand for any kind of order. I stand for order that corresponds to the interests of the working class. If however, any of the laws of the old order can be utilized in the interests of the struggle for the new order, the old laws should be utilized. I cannot object to your postulate that the present system should be attacked in so far as it does not insure the necessary order for the people. And, finally, you are wrong if you think that the Communists are enamored with violence. They would be very pleased to drop violent methods if the ruling class agreed to give way to the working class. But the experience of history speaks against such an assumption.
WELLS: There was a case in the history of England, however, of a class voluntarily handing over power to another class. In the period between 1830 and 1870, the aristocracy, whose influence was still very considerable at the end of the eighteenth century, voluntarily, without a severe struggle, surrendered power to the bourgeoisie, which serves as a sentimental support of the monarchy. Subsequently, this transference of power led to the establishment of the rule of the financial oligarchy.
STALIN: But you have imperceptibly passed from questions of revolution to questions of reform. This is not the same thing. Don’t you think that the Chartist movement played a great role in the Reforms in England in the nineteenth century?
WELLS: The Chartists did little and disappeared without leaving a trace.
STALIN: I do not agree with you. The Chartists, and the strike movement which they organized, played a great role; they compelled the ruling classes to make a number of concessions in regard to the franchise, in regard to abolishing the so-called “rotten boroughs,” and in regard to some of the points of the “Charter.” Chartism played a not unimportant historical role and compelled a section of the ruling classes to make certain concessions, reforms, in order to avert great shocks. Generally speaking, it must be said that of all the ruling classes, the ruling classes of England, both the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie, proved to be the cleverest, most flexible from the point of view of their class interests, from the point of view of maintaining their power. Take as an example, say, from modern history, the general strike in England in 1926. The first thing any other bourgeoisie would have done in the face. of such an event, when the General Council of Trade Unions called for a strike, would have been to arrest the trade union leaders. The British bourgeoisie did not do that, and it acted cleverly from the point of view of its own interests. I cannot conceive of such a flexible strategy being employed by the bourgeoisie in the United States, Germany or France. In order to maintain their rule, the ruling classes of Great Britain have never foresworn small concessions, reforms. But it would be a mistake to think that these reforms were revolutionary.
WELLS: You have a higher opinion of the ruling classes of my country than I have. But is there a great difference between a small revolution and a great reform? Is not a reform a small revolution?
STALIN: Owing to pressure from below, the pressure of the masses, the bourgeoisie may sometimes concede certain partial reforms while remaining on the basis of the existing social-economic system. Acting in this way, it calculates that these concessions are necessary in order to preserve its class rule. This is the essence of reform. Revolution, however, means the transference of power from one class to another. That is why it is impossible to describe any reform as revolution. That is why we cannot count on the change of social systems taking place as an imperceptible transition from one system to another by means, of reforms, by the ruling class making concessions. .
WELLS: I am very grateful to you for this talk which has meant a great deal to me. In explaining things to me you probably called to mind how you had to explain the fundamentals of socialism in the illegal circles before the revolution. At the present time there are in the world only two persons to whose opinion, to whose every word, millions are listening: you and Roosevelt. Others may preach as much as they like; what they say will never be printed or heeded. I cannot yet appreciate what has been done in your country; I only arrived yesterday. But I have already seen the happy faces of healthy men and women and I know that something very considerable is being done here. The contrast with 1920 is astounding.
STALIN: Much more could have been done had we Bolsheviks been cleverer.
WELLS: No, if human beings were cleverer it would be a good thing to invent a five-year plan for the reconstruction of the human brain which obviously lacks many things needed for a perfect social order. (Laughter).
STALIN: Don’t you intend to stay for the Congress of the Soviet Writers Union?
WELLS: Unfortunately, I have various engagements to fulfill and can stay in the U.S.S.R. only for a week. I came to see you and I am very satisfied by our talk. But I intend to discuss with such Soviet writers as I can meet the possibility of their affiliating to the P.E.N. club. This is an international organization of writers founded by Galsworthy; after his death I became president. The organization is still weak, but it has branches in many countries, and what is more important, the speeches of its members, are widely reported in the press. It insists upon this free expression of opinion, even of opposition opinion. I hope to discuss this point with Gorky. I do not know if you are prepared yet for that much freedom here.
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STALIN: We Bolsheviks call it “self-criticism.” It is widely used in the ,U.S.S.R. If there is anything I can do to help you I shall be glad to do so. WELLS: (Expresses thanks.) STALIN: (Expresses thanks for the visit.)
To a large extent progressive politicians who wish to redistribute the wealth of America to smaller—less productive countries created this monster—but now those same politicians are feeling the wrath of their failure surrounding the tax inversion tactics created by the federal government. Tax inversions are where United States corporations move their headquarters to other countries to avoid paying corporate taxes. While those same progressive activists in government wanted this to happen to some extent—they did not bother to do the math on the potential impact to loss in the United States treasury. When Burger King recently announced that they were about to move to Canada to avoid the high corporate taxes in the United States, it forced politicians like Obama and Ohio’s Sharrod Brown to confront the issue as “unpatriotic.”
To the progressive politician patriotism means supporting their system of government schools, their high monopolistic wages for road maintenance, their social infrastructure created by government for government through an intrusive tax system. Obama’s response to the Burger King exodus was that their failure to pay future taxes would lead to tax increases for individual citizens who would be forced to cover the federal bill for services rendered. However, it never occurred to Obama, or Brown that their progressive policies which cost a lot of money—their wealth redistribution schemes, their ridiculously inefficient education system, their welfare policies were unsolicited by a large portion of the thinkers in the United States. Just because the producers, thinkers, and general entrepreneurs are in the minority in America does not mean that the masses through democracy can vote themselves the legal ability to loot and pillage enterprise. Corporate taxes in America are among the highest in the world because of intrusive progressive politicians representing the degenerate masses. They did not consider what would happen if those corporations picked up and left because the looting of their profit would be deemed too costly.
President Obama intensified his criticism of U.S. firms that shift their headquarters overseas Thursday, arguing the tax-saving tactic is unfairly “gaming the system.”
“This is basically taking advantage of tax provisions that are technically legal,” Obama said in an exclusive CNBC interview, referring to a surge of U.S. corporations transferring their official addresses to Ireland, Bermuda or other lower-tax jurisdictions.
“But I think most people would say: If you’re doing business here, if you’re basically still an American country, but you’re simply changing your mailing address to avoid paying taxes, then you’re really not doing right by the country and by the American people,” said Obama.
He acknowledged that corporate executives and board members are paid to maximize company profits and expand business operations. “But people are also paid to be good corporate citizens, they’re also paid to make sure that they’re thinking about, in addition to shareholder value, how do you grow a company over the long-term,” said Obama.
NEW YORK (CBS Cleveland/AP) — Burger King says it struck a deal to buy Tim Hortons Inc. for about $11 billion, a move that creates the world’s third-largest fast-food company and could accelerate the international expansion of the Canadian coffee and doughnut chain.
The corporate headquarters of the new company will be in Canada. The two brands will continue to be run as stand-alone chains, with Burger King still operating out of Miami.
Some analysts have suggested that Canada’s lower tax rates stand to benefit Burger King over time. But Burger King said that’s the not main motivation for the deal.
During a conference call with analysts and investors, Burger King Executive Chairman Alex Behring stressed that international growth possibilities are driving the deal. He noted that 3G Capital, the investment firm that owns a majority stake in Burger King, has turned the hamburger company into one of the fastest-growing chains since buying it in 2010. He said that experience will be applied to Tim Hortons.
Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, is calling for a boycott of Burger King.
“Burger King’s decision to abandon the United States means consumers should turn to Wendy’s Old Fashioned Hamburgers or White Castle sliders. Burger King has always said ‘Have it Your Way’; well my way is to support two Ohio companies that haven’t abandoned their country or customers,” Brown said in a statement. “To help business grow in America, taxpayers have funded public infrastructure, workforce training, and incentives to encourage R&D and capital investment. Runaway corporations benefited from those policies but want U.S. companies to pay their share of the tab.”
Tax inversions, newly popularized by the law firm Skadden Arps Meagher & Flom four years ago, have taken on a new popularity this year as many corporations struggle to appease shareholders looking askance at growing corporate cash piles. While corporate cash piles act as a bulwark during recessionary times, the recovering economy has made the multibillion-dollar cash hoards look like bad financial management.
Many US corporations have complained loudly about US tax rates, even though it’s rare that they pay the full burden of 35% to 39%. Out of the Fortune 500 of prominent US companies, 288 paid an effective US federal tax rate of just 19.4% between 2008 and 2012, according to advocacy group Citizens for Tax Justice.
The conflict really centers around the profits that US companies generate overseas. These foreign profits have flooded the coffers of US companies, making up the bulk of an estimated $1.5 trillion in excess cash. Some, like Apple, have burned down some of the money by returning it to shareholders in the form of dividends, or have bought back their own stock in an attempt to drive their share prices higher on the open market. Still, the trillions remain out of reach until the companies make peace with the taxes they will have to pay, and Apple CEO Tim Cook has testified to federal officials in favor of a tax holiday.
What is ignored by politicians like Obama, and Brown—progressives who falsely believed they could build an empire of dependents in America and that corporations and the productive entrepreneurs of industry would gladly pay for services, schools, roads, and government infrastructure that they don’t support—for the greater good as defined by those same progressives, is that people might not want to pay for their view of the world. Brown’s statements specifically about Burger King was that the business of the fast food chain was built by those same infrastructure items and that the restaurant chain does not want to pay their fair share. But consider that roads to nowhere have no value unless there is a Burger King to drive to, or an Apple product to purchase at a shopping mall. Education has no value unless it is to prepare young people to live in the world created by entrepreneurs—people who will eventually eat at Burger King or drive a car to make an Apple Store purchase. In a capitalist society entrepreneurship comes first, dedication to social causes that win Democratic elections second. The “egg” comes first in that kind of society and it is under a capitalist society that Burger King was created. Socialist countries don’t create such places.
It is patriotic to leave America when progressives have infiltrated capitalism so ridiculously that it has weakened the capitalist system which built all these marvelous businesses. It is patriotic to say no to higher taxes because most taxes only serve politicians who benefit from the demographic receiving wealth redistribution. Most politicians, especially those like Obama and Brown have no ideal how two quarters are made into .50 cents and how the value was created to begin with. All they see is that somebody has money and that they feel it is their duty to social justice to take that money and give it to somebody who doesn’t have it. Most of their public education systems teach the same behavior and their road construction crews are artificially high in cost because of their monopoly on that particular construction industry. The system really only benefits progressives and their politicians—it does not benefit the job creator. Without a job creator there is no place for a road to go, or even the need for an education—because the destination is created by the few for the many. Not the other way around.
I don’t normally eat at Burger King, but this week I will to support the restaurant chain in their desire to use a tax inversion to save some corporate tax. Not paying a tax is the only way to vote against the big spending wealth redistribution policies of typical progressives who attack everything about the system of job creation that they can without restraint. Progressives should not wonder why Burger King and many other companies want to avoid the tax—if they understood the nature of profit and how important it is to any economy—especially a capitalist one like the United States. But Obama and Brown are career politicians—they get paid to steal the wealth of companies like Burger King, and to give it to those too lazy to be enterprising. So their befuddled nature in this case is amusing. What is insulting is when they insist that others will have to pay the taxes Burger King is avoiding because in their minds they have already spent the money. It is in that condition that they prove themselves to be so detrimental to the human race and intelligence of any kind. So help Burger King by purchasing a Whopper today. I am!
Bill O’Reilly and Megan Kelly from Fox News had an interesting debate about the perceived disparity of the black population and the so-called white privilege that is so much talked about regarding minorities. Kelly rattled off a series of statistics which showed that blacks are clearly falling behind in virtually every category of social measurement and she leaned in favor of the argument supporting “white privilege.” O’Reilly proposed a number of opposition arguments which provided clarity refuting the designation favoring whites. That discussion can be seen below and is worth noting.
I have had more personal friends who were black than white over the years and understand the issue very well. Megan is only talking about the result of statistics, but not the cause—whereas Bill O’Reilly began to touch on the real issues. There is no white privilege in America. The suppression of the whites against the blacks is a thing of the past and is only still considered by the very ignorant. The cause of the disparity between the statistical facts rattled off by Megan Kelly is that blacks tend to support by default the position of collectivism versus the personal responsibility of individualism. Collectivists associate all the things that happen to them as a group allowing many in that group to hide their bad behavior behind the mask of consensus. In poor populations where fathers are infrequent, government sustains personal incomes, and the general philosophy is a collectivist oriented belief system statistics like the ones Megan Kelly discussed will take place regardless of the color of anybody’s skin.
If personal responsibility is not present in a culture, it will fail and resemble the kind of conditions seen in Ferguson. The cries for equality by blacks and accusations of white privilege only come from those who decry personal responsibility and seek more collective mandates to hide their crimes. The crimes of the typical perpetrator of the Ferguson riots would be loose moral attributes, poor family structure, terrible work ethics and deplorable personal conduct—all traits that center on collectivism. Those who are successful in society tend to be those who conduct themselves with a code of some valor, personal responsibility, and awareness of their impact on the world around them not as a collective mass—but exclusively as an individual.
Being an avid motorcyclist I can name countless times that I have watched a person in another car throw a smoked cigarette out of a window. A lot of the time the same cars displaying environmental concerns are the worst perpetrators. Think how hypocritical it is for a lover a nature to liter the streets of earth with cigarettes freshly consumed and still smoking. But whenever a car is seen with bumper stickers displaying rainbows of support for mother earth, and cigarette smoke dances from a cracked window, 9 times out of 10 that same person will throw their empty cigarettes into the road while sitting at a stop light. Many times they throw them out the window while driving not even caring that I’m on a motorcycle behind them.
I have studied this behavior for many years and this is the conclusion resulting from those observations. People who throw their cigarettes out of windows tend to be collectivist oriented people who do not hold personal responsibility in high regard. They assume that they are hidden behind a mask of anonymity provided by collectivist identification. Because personal responsibility is not what they are functioning from they can’t imagine why or how their small cigarette thrown from a window could harm the earth. What they fail to see is that if 30 to 40% of all people in a 300 million person population did the same, the roadways would be littered with pollution caused by the cigarettes. But if the same person believes that a corporation—which is a collective group is harming the earth with pollution, then they will march with signs of activism and proclaim with fervor—“down with the rich CEO” the individuals at the top of large companies. Their lack of personal responsibility has a double edge to it, first they hate individuals who control groups of people—so they attack CEOs, second they only understand things in terms of collective reference. Anything outside of those parameters are invisible to them—like the thought that a simple cigarette might cause pollution in the world.
The same can be said of the welfare recipient, or the louse who blows off a free public education because their fatherless households failed to instruct them of the value, or the drug addict who shrugs away the value of their life in favor of getting high—the removal of personal responsibility during times intoxication. The collectivist cannot associate responsibility with personal behavior because their lives are constructed around avoiding that diagnosis. Thus you have race baiters like Al Sharpton declaring to a mass of angry blacks that “police have the money for guns, but not for education,” as if spending money on public education would solve the problem in poor black neighborhoods. Billions of dollars in additional funding could be thrown into public education in a black neighborhood and nothing would improve—just as nothing has improved in public education in spite of additional spending for decades now—because personal responsibility for education is not being taught as an entry-level criteria. Until that happens nothing will improve.
No matter what the topic when collectivism is involved, the result is always the same. Decaying circumstances follow no matter what the skin color or sex involved entails. If personal responsibility is vacant, corruption follows in every case. There are no exceptions.
It is a lack of personal responsibility that is killing black America. It is a lack of individual assessment and family structure that causes most of the trouble in communities like Ferguson. During the last election, I supported Herman Cain and in the future I hope that Ben Carson runs for president, just as I have supported Alan Keys in the past. They are all black politicians who I adore, so nobody can call me a racist. I have more affiliations with more minorities than most people have in their entire lives, so I can speak fluently when I say that personal responsibly is the key to success in life. The lack of personal responsibly is the cause of failure almost every time—even considering the misfortune of hard luck.
White privilege only comes to those who are taught to conduct their lives responsibly. White people who adhere to collectivism as their guiding philosophy are just as wrecked as blacks who do the same. Color has nothing to do with it—personal responsibility is everything. I have known many blacks who are quite successful. I know whites who are very successful. And I have known many other types men and women who are very successful—and what they all have in common is a belief in themselves as individuals. All the failures in life that I have ever known all share in common a belief in collectivism—in the hope that they can live forever concealed from responsibility. They of course cannot, but the fault of their circumstances are their own. They can read these words and become angry, but they can offer no argument in favor of collectivism that cannot be refuted easily. Notice the lack of comments on this article—which is free to the world—yet the lack of a defense of collectivism. That is because they can’t defend it. Collectivism is the reason that black communities, white communities and groups of all kinds fail. It is no mystery, only a carefully concealed secret driven by a desire for waking intoxication of personal irresponsibility.
To find the center of the ancient Lexington city it is fairly easy if you know what you are looking for. For those familiar with Lexington simply get off the highway exit that delivers you to the Kentucky Horse Park. Instead of turning in, proceed down Iron Works Pike road for a few miles until you arrive at the store Jot-Em Down. Turn left onto Russell Cave Road. When you arrive at the gate to the destroyed Mt Brilliant mansion you will be there. It was on this property that some of the largest and most organized mounds aligned in a similar way as to the Newark earthworks near Columbus, Ohio once stood. The site on the Mt. Brilliant property first reported by the traveler Thomas Ashe chronicled in the 1872 book by George W. Ranck breaks down the precise measurements as they were before construction and farming destroyed them entirely. But that’s not all, the site was vast extending from the location 6 miles north-east of the downtown area to areas dotting all around the core of the current city. It is difficult now to know how many homes were built through the burial remains of these ancient dwellers, but the account according to Ranck’s book is that it was numerous saying “These well-attested facts, together with the tradition related to this day of an extensive cave existing under the city of Lexington, relieve of its improbable air the statement that a subterranean cemetery of the original inhabitants of this place was discovered here nearly a century ago. In 1776, three years before the first permanent white settlement was made at Lexington, some venturesome hunters, most probably from Boonesborough, had their curiosity excited by the strange appearance of some stones they saw in the woods where our city now stands. They removed these stones, and came to others of peculiar workmanship, which, upon examination, they found had been placed there to conceal the entrance to an ancient catacomb, formed in the solid rock, fifteen feet below the surface of the earth. They discovered that a gradual descent from the opening brought them to a passage, four feet wide and seven feet high, leading into a spacious apartment, in which were numerous niches, which they were amazed to find occupied by bodies which, from their perfect state of preservation, had evidently been embalmed. For six years succeeding this discovery, the region in which this catacomb was located, was visited by bands of raging Indians and avenging whites; and during this period of blood and passion, the catacomb was dispelled, and its ancient mummies, probably the rarest remains of a forgotten era that man has ever seen, were well nigh swept out of existence. But not entirely. Some years after the red men and the settlers had ceased hostilities; the old sepulcher was again visited and inspected. It was found to be three hundred feet long, one hundred feet wide, and eighteen feet high. The floor was covered with rubbish and fine dust, from which was extracted several sound fragments of human limbs. At this time the entrance to this underground cemetery of Ancient Lexington is totally unknown. For nearly three-quarters of a century, its silent chamber has not echoed to a human footfall. It is hidden from sight, as effectually as was once buried Pompeii, and even the idea that it ever existed is laughed at by those who walk over it, as heedless of its near presence as were the generations of incredulous peasants who unconsciously danced above the long-lost villa of Diomedes”
But the heart of this ancient city, its cultural epitaph was on the location of the present day Mt. Brilliant site. For those who know anything about horses and thoroughbred racing the current owner of the Mt. Brilliant property owns the nearby stud barn of Man o’ War who won all but one of his 21 lifetime starts—which is a remarkable accomplishment. That stud barn is right in the middle of this ancient archaeological site of ancient earthworks. Of course farming and construction have all but destroyed all the present day evidence—and if not for the books by Thomas Ashe and George W. Ranck there would be no evidence at all. The closest that history has come to indicating anything at all was amiss in the area were that the Indians in the area were terrified of Kentucky land—as chronicled in the novels by Allan W Eckert. The Indians would hunt in the area, but they never settled a tribe there, and one of their early arguments with the arrival of the white settlers was that the whites did not respect that land as the Indians did. The whites had no fear of the spirits which resided there—as they did fear those ephemeral entities. Their reason was that they viewed the Lexington, Kentucky area as a “dark and bloody ground.” It was a shadow-land to the Indians. In 1800, some Sacs who were in St. Louis said of Kentucky that it was full of the souls of a strange race which their people had long ago exterminated. They regarded this land with superstitious awe. Here they hunted and here they fought, but no tribe was ever known to settle permanently in it.” The eradication of the evidence of that ancient people started in 1774 when Thomas Jefferson granted 2,000 acres of land north of the Kentucky River to William Russell in recognition of his brother Henry’s outstanding military service in the French and Indian War.
The land was eventually divided between William’s two youngest sons, Robert Spotswood Russell and William Russell, Jr. Shortly after the end of the Revolutionary War, young William laid claim to the smaller portion (800 acres) so he could enjoy the mystical cave and ever-flowing spring that add an enchanting ambiance to what is now known as Mt. Brilliant. Russell chose the name to commemorate the Virginia estate of Patrick Henry’s family.
In 1792, Russell built the central portion of the house. Cuming remarked in his 1807 book, “Tour of the West”, that Mt. Brilliant, surrounded by a wall with turrets at each end, lacked “only the vineyards” in its similarity to the French Provincial regions of Languedoc and Provence.
Russell died in 1824 and his heirs sold Mt. Brilliant in 1863. In 1832, Mount Brilliant passed to Hamilton Atchison Jr. The historical connection here is the relation to David Rice Atchison, “President for a Day” between Presidents James Polk and Zachary Taylor, who often visited his cousins at Mount Brilliant. A Lexington native and 1825 graduate of Transylvania, Atchison moved to Missouri and later Kansas. He was a U.S. senator and an organizer of the Atchison-Topeka and Santa Fe Railway Mount Brilliant was sold in 1861 to Thomas Hughes, who later owned historical Elk Hill and Clifton. Arthur Delong acquired Mount Brilliant in 1891, until 1905 when it was purchased by James Ben Ali Haggin. The Haggin family owned the farm for the next 85 years, and it became a fixture in the Kentucky political and social scene in the 20th Century.
In fact, it was at a political rally held at Russell Cave, which lays on the Mt. Brilliant property, that the infamous duel between abolitionist Cassius Clay and Samuel M. Brown took place. Clay, Henry Clay’s cousin, was saved by a stroke of astonishing fortune when the bullet aimed directly for his heart ricocheted off the silver-lined sheath of his Bowie knife. Samuel Brown was in fact a hired assassin sent to kill Clay for his insistence that slavery be banned. It was in that very same cave on the Mt Brilliant property that many escaped slaves hid while on their journey north into Cincinnati. But the cave has a much deeper—and mystical quality that points back to the politics of the day. After all, it is more than a little intriguing that a political rally for which the Clay, Brown duel occurred was in a cave when a perfectly good mansion was available just a few hundred feet away above the creek bed.
Feel free to read more about this history at these links:
Let us now study what was around that cave on the Mt Brilliant property as described in 1872 by George Washington Ranck. I include it here as I have looked for a hard copy of the book but only know of the scanned online copy by Cornell University. Should fortunes change and documentation of such resources online cease—a proper record of the evidence is necessary. It may also be desired to perform some archaeology if the owner would permit it. In the cave, bones were found of these ancient people and has been the site of many turbulent events since. There are few caves in the world that have hosted such a variety of characters as that of Russell Cave, but spelunking is not the most comfortable. Much of it is flooded so trudging through the cold water to the locations where archaeology could be properly performed will take some effort and discomfort. But it is there and only there that the ancient race of people can ever hope to be ascertained, as all the remnants of what is described below has been destroyed except for the text you are about to read. Of that text I have performed some basic editing to make it more digestible. The pictures included I deliberately kept the property of Mt. Brilliant out of the pictures to respect the owners privacy. Only the cave area is zoomed in on due to the historical significance of it. The wide pan shot is of the area described below. The elements described below used to be sprawled out within the picture frame and were quite large. If anything still remains, it would be difficult to detect due to 200 years of aggressive use of the land, and modern construction along with farming. The original text can be found at the concluding link
“Some months after he had examined and described the fortification at the head of Hickman creek, Prof. Eafinesque surveyed the upper group on North Elkhorn, near Russell’s cave, or what is now known as the West place. We quote his description of it, which will be read with more and more interest and wonder as time passes, and slowly but surely levels with the earth and blots out forever all that is left to remind us of a lost race, whose stupendous structures covered the fertile tract which afterward became the favorite hunting ground of savage tribes. He says: “I visited this upper group of monuments, a few days ago, in company with two gentlemen of Lexington. They are situated about six miles from this town, in a north-northeast direction, on the west and back part of Colonel Russell’s farm, which stands on the road leading from Lexington to Cynthiana. “The ground on which they stand is a beautiful level spot, covered with young trees and short grass, or line turf, on the south side of a bend of North Elkhorn creek, nearly opposite the mouth, and close by Hamilton’s farm and spring, which lie west of them. They extend as far as Russell’s cave, on the east side of the Cynthiana road. “No. 1, which stands nearly in the center, is a circular enclosure, six hundred feet in circumference, formed of four parts : 1. A broad circular parapet, now about twenty feet broad, and two feet high. 2. An inward ditch, now very shallow and nearly on a level with the outward ground. 3. A gateway, lying due north, raised above the ditch, about fifteen feet broad, and leading to the central area. 4. A square central area, raised nearly three feet above the ditch, perfectly square and level, each side seventy feet long and facing the four cardinal points. ” No. 2 lies northeast of No. 1, at about two hundred and fifty feet distance; it is a regular, circular, convex mound, one hundred and seventy-five feet in circumference, and nearly four feet high, surrounded by a small outward ditch. ” No. 3 lies nearly north of No. 1, and at about two hundred and fifty feet distance from No. 2. It is a singular and complicated monument, of an irregular square form, nearly conical, or narrower at the upper end, facing the creek. It consists: 1. Of a high and broad parapet, about one hundred feet long and more than five feet high, as yet, above the inward ditch on the south base, which is about seventy-five feet long. 2. Of an inside ditch. 3. Of an area of the same form with the outward parapet, but rather uneven. 4. Of an obsolete broad gateway at the upper west side. 5. Of an irregular raised platform, connected with the outward parapet, and extending toward the north to connect it with several mounds. 6. Of three small mounds, about fifty feet in circumference, and two feet high, standing irregularly around that platform, two on the west side and one on the east. ” No. 4. These are two large sunken mounds, connected with No. 3. One of them stands at the upper end of the platform, and is sunk in an outward circular ditch, about two hundred and fifty feet in circumference, and two feet deep. The mound, which is perfectly round and convex, is only two feet high, and appears sunk in the ditch. Another similar mound stands in a corn-field, connected by a long raised way to the upper east end of the parapet in No. 3. “No. 5 is a monument of an oblong square form, consisting of the four usual parts of a parapet, an inward ditch, a central area, and a gateway. This last stands nearly opposite the gateway of No. 3, at about one hundred and twenty-five feet distance, and leads over the ditch to the central area. The whole outward circumference of the parapet is about four hundred and forty feet. The longest side fronts the southwest and northeast, and is one hundred and twenty feet long, while the shortest is one hundred feet long. The central area is level, and has exactly half the dimensions of the parapet, being sixty feet long and fifty wide. It is raised two or three feet as well as the parapet. The end opposite the gateway is not far from Hamilton’s spring. “Now to No. 6 is a mound without a ditch, one hundred and ninety feet in circumference, and five feet high. It lies nearly west from No. 1.
“No. 7 is a stone mound, on the east side of Russell’s spring, and on the brim of the gully. It lies east from the other monuments and more than half a mile distant. It is ten feet high and one hundred and seventy-five feet in circumference, being formed altogether by loose stones heaped together, but now covered with a thin soil of stone and grass. “No. 8 is a similar stone mound, but rather smaller, lying north of number. 7, at the confluence of Russell’s spring with North Elkhorn. “Among the principal peculiarities, which I have noticed in this .group of monuments, the square area of No. 1, enclosed within a circular ditch and parapet, is very interesting, since it exhibits’ a new compound geometrical form of building. The ditch must have been much deeper once, and the parapet, with the area, much higher; since, during the many centuries which have elapsed over these monuments, the rains, dust, decayed plants, and trees must have gradually filled the ditch, etc. I was told by Mr. Martin that within his recollection, or about twenty-five years ago, the ditch in the monument at the head of Hickman’s creek was at least one foot deeper. “Whenever we find central and separated areas in the Alleghawian monuments, we must suppose they were intended for the real places of worship and sacrifices, where only the priests and chiefs were admitted, while the crowd stood probably on the parapet to look on; and, in fact, these parapets are generally convex and sloping inward or toward the central area. “The ditched mound, No. 2, is remarkable, and must have had a peculiar destination, like the sunken mounds. No. 4, which differ from No. 2 merely by being much lower, and appearing, therefore, almost sunk in the ditch. “The stone mounds, Nos. 7 and 8, are also peculiar and evidently sepulchral. But why were the dead bodies covered here with stone instead of earth? Perhaps these mounds belonged to different tribes, or the conveniency of finding stones, in the rocky neighborhood of Russell’s cave and spring, may have been an inducement for employing them.” Some of these mounds described by Rafinesque were visited in 1846, and found to be nearly obliterated ; others, however, near the dividing line between the old military survey of Dandridge and Meredith, were still distinct, and were described in 1847 as follows: ” The most easterly work is on the estate of C. C. Moore. It is on the top of a high bluff, on the west side of Elkhorn, in the midst of a very thick growth, mostly of sugar trees, the area within a deep and broad circular ditch is about a quarter of an acre of land. The ditch is still deep enough in some places to hide a man on horseback. The dirt taken from, the ditch is thrown outward; and there is a gateway where the ditch was never dug, some ten feet wide on the north side of the circle. Trees several hundred years old are growing on the bank and in the bottom of the ditch and over the area which it encloses, and the whole region about it. There is another work a quarter of a mile west of the above one. It commences on the Meredith estate and runs over on the Cabells’ Dale property, and contains about ten acres of land. The shape of the area is not unlike that of the moon when about two-thirds full. The dirt from the ditch inclosing this area is thrown sometimes out, sometimes in, and sometimes both ways. An ash tree was cut down in the summer of 1845, which stood upon the brink of this ditch, which, upon being examined, proved to be four hundred years old. The ditch is still perfectly distinct throughout its whole extent, and in some places is so deep and steep as to be dangerous to pass with a carriage. A mound connected with this same chain of works was opened in the summer of 1871. It is situated about half a mile west of the earthwork already described as on top of the bluff, and about a quarter of a mile north of the larger oval one. It is on the farm of Mr. James Fisher, adjoining the plantation on which Dr. Eobert Peter at present resides, and is part of the old Meredith property before mentioned. The mound has a diameter of about seventy feet, and rises with a regular swell in the center to the height of three and a half to four feet above the general level of the valley pasture on which it is located, only about fifteen feet above low water in the North Elkhorn creek, and about three hundred and twenty-five feet south from its margin. Mr. Fisher made an excavation into the center of this mound about four to five feet in diameter and about three and a half feet deep, in which, in a bed of wood-ashes containing charred fragments of small wood, he found a number of interesting copper, flint, bone, and other relics of the ancient Mound Builders, which were carefully packed by Dr. Robert Peter (who resides on the adjoining Meredith farm), and transmitted to the Smithsonian Institute, at “Washington, for preservation. The copper articles were five in number; three of which were irregularly oblong-square implements or ornaments, about four inches in length and two and one-eighth to three and three-quarter inches wide and one-quarter inch thick at lower end (varying somewhat in size, shape, and thickness); each with two curved horns attached to the corners of one end, which is wider and thinner than the other end. These were evidently made of native copper, by hammering, are irregular in thickness and rude in workmanship, and have been greatly corroded in the Japseof time, so that they not only have upon them a thick coating of green carbonate and red oxide of copper, but the carbonate had cemented these articles, with adjoining flint arrow-heads, pieces of charcoal, etc., into one cohering mass, in the bed of ashes, etc., in which they were found lying irregularly one upon the other. The other two copper implements were axes or hatchets; one nearly six inches long, the other nearly four inches; each somewhat adze-shaped wider at one end, which end had a sharp cutting edge. With these were found nearly a peck of flint arrow-heads, all splintered and broken, as by the action of fire; also, three hemispherical polished pieces of red hematitic iron ore about two inches in diameter; some door-button shaped pieces of limestone, each perforated with two holes; several pieces of sandstone, which seemed to have been used for grinding and polishing purposes; and many fragments of bones of animals, mostly parts of ribs, which appeared to have been ground or shaped ; among which was one, blackened by fire, which seemed to have been part of a handle of a dagger; also, some fragments of pottery, etc. The fragments of charcoal, lying near the copper articles, were saturated with carbonate of copper, resulting from the oxidation of the copper articles, parts of which were oxidized to the center, although a quarter of an inch in thickness; and many pieces of this coal and portions of flint arrow-heads remain strongly cemented to the copper implements by this carbonate. To what uses these rude, oblong- square horned copper articles were put, except for ornament, cannot be conjectured. No inscription or significant murk was found on any of them. No human bones could be distinguished among the fragments found, but only the immediate center of the mound was opened. The citizens of Lexington may, in truth, muse among the ancient ruins and awe-inspiring relics of a once mighty people. “Who and what were the beings who fought with these weapons, ate from these vessels, built these tombs and mounds and altars, and slept at last in this now concealed catacomb? Where existed that strange nation, whose grand chain of works seemed to have Lexington for its nucleus and center? We can only speculate! One inclines to the opinion that they were contemporaries of the hardy Picts. Another declares them identical with the Alleghawians or progenitors of the Aztecs, and cites as proof, the remains of their temples, which are declared to be wonderfully similar to those of the ancient Mexicans described by Baron Humboldt. The earthen vessels here plowed up from the virgin soil, he says, were like those used by the Alleghawians for cooking purposes. Still another writer, dwelling upon the mummies here discovered, sees in the original inhabitants of Lexington, a people descended from the Egyptians. Other authors, eminent and learned, almost without number, have discussed this subject, but their views are as conflicting as those already mentioned, and nothing is satisfactory, except the negative assurance that the real first settlers of Lexington, the State of Kentucky, and the entire Mississippi valley, were not the American Indians, as no Indian nation has ever built walled cities, defended by entrenchments, or buried their dead in sepulchers hewn in the solid rock. “Who, then, were these mysterious beings? From whence did they come? What were the forms of their religion and government? Are questions that will probably never be solved by mortal man; but that they lived and flourished centuries before the Indian who can doubt? Where they erected their Cyclopean temples and cities, with no vision of the red men who would come after them, and chase the deer and the buffalo over their leveled and grass-covered walls. Here they lived, and labored, and died, before Columbus had planted the standard of old Spain upon the shores of a new world; while Gaul, and Britain, and Germany were occupied by roving tribes of barbarians, and, it may be, long before imperial Rome had reached the height of her glory and splendor. But they had no literature, and when they died they were utterly forgotten. They may have been a great people, but it is all the same to those who came if they were not, for their greatness was never recorded. Their history was never written not a letter of their language remains, and even their name is forgotten. They trusted in the mighty works of their hands, and now, indeed, are they a dead nation and a lost race. The ancient city which stood where Lexington now stands, has vanished like a dream, and vanished forever. Another has well said: “Hector and Achilles, though mere barbarians, live because sung by Homer. Grermanicus lives as the historian himself said, because narrated by Tacitus; but these builders of mounds perish because no Homerarid no Tacitus has told of them. It is the spirit only, which, by the pen, can build immortal monuments.” It is a favorite theory of many that the Indians of North America migrated from Asia; that the once noble race, which has almost melted away, was descended from the ten tribes of Israel which were driven from Palestine seven hundred years before the birth of Christ. But this is a theory only. The advent of the Indians and the stock from which they sprung will never be determined; but that they came after the “Mound Builders” is evident. The appearance of the Indians was the death-knell of that doomed race whose rich and beautiful lands and spoil-gorged cities inflamed the desperate and destitute invaders. The numerous tumuli which yet remain attest the fierceness of the conflict which ensued. A great people were swept out of existence, their cities disappeared, the grass grew above them, and in time the forests.”
Avid readers of the day like Thomas Jefferson and the Illuminati practitioner Harman Blennerhassett knew of Thomas Ashe’s book from his Travels in America—which wasn’t published until 1806, but word of its contents were spreading as Ashe visited taverns and allowed listeners to know the contents of his manuscripts. Ashe was the third son of a half-pay officer, and was born at Glasnevin, near Dublin, 15 July 1770. He received a commission in the 83rd regiment of foot, which, however, was almost immediately afterwards disbanded; and he was sent to a counting-house at Bordeaux. There he suffered a short imprisonment for wounding in a duel a gentleman whose sister he had seduced, but, the wound not proving fatal, the prosecution was not persisted in.
Returning to Dublin, Ashe was appointed secretary to the Diocesan and Endowed Schools Commission, but, getting into debt, resigned his office and retired to Switzerland. He then spent several years in foreign travel, living, according to his own account,[1] in a free and unconstrained fashion, and experiencing a somewhat chequered fortune.
In his later years Ashe was short of money. He died at Bath on 17 December 1835.
Besides recording in his Memoirs his impressions of the countries he visited, Ashe published separately:
Memoirs of Mammoth and other Bones found in the vicinity of the Ohio, 1806; and
A Commercial and Geographical Sketch of Brazil and Madeira, 1812.
He was also the author of novels, including the Spirit of the Book, 1811, 4th edition 1812; the Liberal Critic, or Henry Percy, 1812: and the Soldier of Fortune, 1816.
The skeptic might be reluctant to believe in Ashe’s accounts of an ancient Lexington, and I might too if I did not know that a housing development nearly bulldozed the ancient city of Cahokia outside of St. Louis mistaking the mounds there as simple hills. If nobody had put a stop to the process during construction of the St Louis eastside, Monks Mound would have been leveled as well and the bones within the mounds destroyed nearly unnoticed under the trampling of machinery. In Lexington, with the violent past it had and history with Transylvania added to the complicated history making legitimate archaeological study of the area nearly impossible. Transylvania, or the Transylvania Colony, was a short-lived, extra-legal colony founded in 1775 by Richard Henderson, who controlled the North Carolina based Transylvania Company, which had reached an agreement to purchase the land from the Cherokee in the “Treaty of Sycamore Shoals”. This area was claimed at the time by the Province of Virginia —especially following Lord Dunmore’s War —and North Carolina. It is primarily located in what is now the central and western parts of the State of Kentucky. American pioneer Daniel Boone was hired by Henderson to establish the Wilderness Road going through the Cumberland Gap into central “Kentuckee”, where he founded Boonesborough, the designated capital of the Transylvania colony. Transylvania officially ceased to exist after the Virginia General Assembly invalidated the Transylvania Company’s purchase in 1776. Richard Henderson fancied the start of his own colony prior to the Revolutionary War. If he had succeeded it would have been a 14th colony. So there was some recklessness in the building of Lexington as ownership changed hands, Indians continuously attacked, and only blood thirsty soldiers of fortune and those fleeing religious persecution were the first to fill the land plagued with violence. Lexington was erected as a city under forged conditions—and archaeology was not their primary concern.
But the Illuminati in America knew what they thought that ancient race was, and they built their secrets around that knowledge attempting to tap into that energy believed to reside around them. It is therefore ironic that the horse racing culture emerged so prominently in Lexington of all places, and that the spirited horses born there have an otherworldly appeal. It is also ironic that politics, the abolitionist movement and many important historic events culminated at that very spot around Russell’s Cave for well over 200 years—but the evidence of those happenings has been carefully obscured—and overlooked. Instead modern society is obsessed with the mansions, the gardens, and the horses of that former ancient society. The spender of elegance has disguised the fact that an entire race of people unknown to time was eradicated at that very spot. With earthworks only rivaling the Newark, Ohio site and Serpent Mound a picture of a vast civilization that lived in the Kentucky and Ohio region well before any Indian hunted with a spear or threw a rock is evident. These were people who mummified their bodies, offered sacrifices on stone alters, and had advanced mathematical knowledge. Their evidence has been confined behind a thin veil of opulence associated with the horse racing culture and the hidden knowledge of secret societies.
The political rally in 1843 where so many prominent politicians and events collected themselves for more than the acoustical qualities of a cave, it was known among them that in such a cave the ancients of that great race dwelled and buried their dead. But being part of a new country these early settlers had no predilection in assuming they were the first to arrive in such a vast landscape. They had no Columbus Day to celebrate, or progressive history in maintaining a history of the African-American or Indian people. They simply hoped to learn from those ancient people what they could as they forged a new country and if you were a good little politician or financial donor you might be invited to that secret Illuminati/Masonic knowledge of those strange people who resided in Lexington Kentucky thousands of years before a white man ever arrived—or an Indian.
And so it goes one of the greatest mysteries in the North American continent is buried under the city of Lexington and is only hinted at by the Masonic architecture littering the region, or the artwork at the various mansions around the Lexington horse farms. Knowledge is power, and so long as few people knew of this ancient race, there was unification in that harmonious correspondence with those who were invited to gather in the ancient catacombs of what was left of the great race who originally founded America and were dedicated to the service of freedom for all—even the slaves as Cassius Clay so valiantly defended in the cave’s mouth under the estate of Mt. Brilliant built upon the ruins of a lost race. Lexington was the destruction of a genius lost to history and only known to a few of the most educated and enlightened. But now dear reader—you can count yourselves among them—because you know too the truth long suppressed.
People’s political opinions largely are formed by the kind of work they do, so it is not unusual within the Beltway of Washington to find people who think the way Lois Lerner does about “radical right-wingers.” For them, anybody who is not willing to throw endless amounts of money at government jobs and altruistic causes progressives support—is a “dangerous right-winger.” The same mentality caught by the Lois Lerner emails can be found in virtually any public school, or where government workers have unrealistic expectations about wage rates and quality of living under the umbrella of government. The desire for government to always expand is to bring in more employees who will thus protect it from insurgency. It is that concern of rejection that people like Lois Lerner fear—a rejection of their lifestyle and beliefs which is frightening to them.
One of the reasons I have spent the last week talking about the Annie Oakley Festival that I recently attended was because the entire region around Darke County, Ohio where it’s held is so wonderfully free of the type of people who work for government. There are of course police who sit like parasites on the side of the road looking to give out tickets to meet their revenue quotas—there are school teachers, and Post Office workers around town, but a vast majority of the people were farmers or people who have fled the urban life for the rural countryside to get away from government in some form or another. Nobody I met during my visit were radicals, but there were a lot of people who were to the political right of my position who have Don’t Tread on Me flags hanging from their porches, and gun racks in the windows of their trucks and they didn’t vote for Obama—that is for sure. They are the mainstream of rural America which makes up most of the country—and in those lands, they are filed with the kind of people who Lois Lerner fears most—those scary people who call in to talk radio shows and express anti-government opinions.
Lois Lerner and Barack Obama gladly put on blinders to the outside world of the Beltway. Their entire life and culture of their occupations centers around government employment which is not performance based, but measured by kiss-ass ability. Schmoozing, brown-nosing, and boot licking to gain promotions are particularly prevalent in government occupations if they want to accelerate faster than their annual merit increases. The fear that those government employees have of the “radical right” are essentially of those who have value, who likely attend church on Sundays, who are engaged in long marriages to the same spouse, who prefer straight sex over anal sex—in essence people who care about things over those who don’t.
I tend to judge cultures based on the McDonald’s matrix. Since McDonald’s restaurants essentially are the same everywhere—the food is the same, costs are the same and is of the same quality, the only differences from one to another is in the people who generally attend. For instance, if a McDonald’s is attended in Finneytown, Ohio it is common to see women wearing hoochy mama heels looking like they are Vegas prostitutes because the welfare culture in and around the area produces those types of people. I actually had this experience last week during a lunch rush. The people were discombobulated and behaved as if they were perpetually intoxicated. The people in front and behind the counter were fragmented—the static patterns of their lives had major holes that were filled by chaos. The best way to attribute their behavior was that they were the result of government employment—in one way or another they were victims of government employment. They either worked for the government in some way, or they were welfare families mooching off the tax payer for their sustenance. Just days later my wife and I stopped at a very nice McDonald’s in downtown Eaton, Ohio—in the middle of a very rural community. Sitting in the seats were old men reading newspapers and talking to their neighbors, groups of women planning yard sales, and families bringing their kids to play on the vast indoor playground they have there. Behind the counter the young women were very nice, and seemed engaged with life. It looked like the town McDonald’s was a major employer in that remote country town, so people treated the job with care—like it was something to cherish. A truck drove by me outside with a Confederate Flag in the back window and had a sticker of the church they attended on the bumper. This was the land that people like Lois Lerner fears most from the vantage point of the Beltway.
Using the McDonald’s matrix it is easy to determine the quality of people from region to region. Most of the time the root cause of degradation of a population can be determined by properly measuring the amount of government influence there is on a community. In places where welfare checks are more frequent than privately employed citizens, the quality of people goes down dramatically by way of personal values and taste. In places where getting a job at McDonald’s is a coveted occupation the value for the type of clothing one wears, the way they speak, the kind of things they put in their heads goes up dramatically. My trip to the Eaton McDonald’s was in itself a vacation because it was nice to be around people who had value. Beltway types and big government employees would say that such places are racist or “extreme” in their political views simply because they themselves fear such places the way that a demon might fear Holy Water. They ridicule the people in such towns because they don’t have control of them. They don’t fear the people who live in Finnytown.
Lois Lerner is reflective of a Beltway culture from both Republicans and Democrats who live in a bubble of their own making constructed by their social mooching and rampant looting of those who do have value. Since they are fleeing from judgment for their social crimes they have no other recourse but to hate and slander. The very existence of some people is too much for typical government workers to handle. During my entire trip to the Annie Oakley Festival from the time I left my driveway to the show itself, the interaction with the people was wonderfully American in that they were self-motivated and lacking that haze over their eyes that you often get when dealing with government employees—where the light is on, but nobody is home upstairs.
It is this culture of having somebody home who can think with their minds that Lois Lerner and her type of government worker fears so emphatically. They slander it, they tax it, they try with everything they have to destroy it—but when they can’t they hide from it in their Beltway offices and their expensive homes hoping to change the world into their image by other means. And when they can’t, they complain about it. I’ve been to D.C. and have traveled all around the area. I covered enough ground on my trip to the Annie Oakley Festival to eat the land mass of Washington D.C., New York City, and Los Angeles put together. The people who live in that vast summation of land won’t be opening their doors to the type of government interference that has corrupted Finneytown, and the other suburbs of Cincinnati where former glorious homes now rot under the care of the lazy, the addicted, and the minds with nobody home.
To illustrate the point let’s look at some census data between the two regions, Finnytown then Eaton.
In Finnytown the population was 12,741 at the U.S. 2010 census, in 5,294 housing units.[2] However, as of the 2000 census,[3] formerly there had been 13,492 people, 5,194 households, and 3,807 families residing in the CDP. The population density had been 3,382.8 people per square mile (1,305.6/km²). There had been 5,336 housing units in 2000. The racial makeup of the CDP in 2010 was 61.7% White, 33.7% Black, 1.9% Hispanic, with others 1% or less. However, the racial makeup in 2000 had been 72.95% White, 23.83% African American, 0.16% Native American, 1.10% Asian, 0.01% Pacific Islander, 0.45% from other races, and 1.48% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race had been 0.80% of the population in 2000.
There had been 5,194 households, out of which 34.6% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 55.7% were married couples living together, 14.6% had a female householder with no husband present, and 26.7% were non-families. 23.9% of all households were made up of individuals and 10.7% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.57 and the average family size was 3.04.
In the CDP in 2000, the population was spread out, with 27.6% under the age of 18, 6.1% from 18 to 24, 26.3% from 25 to 44, 22.9% from 45 to 64, and 17.1% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 38 years. For every 100 females there were 87.9 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 80.3 males.
The median income for a household in the CDP in 2000 had been $52,219, and the median income for a family had been $58,393. Males had a median income of $41,932 versus $31,250 for females. The per capita income for the CDP was $25,355. About 4.3% of families and 5.9% of the population were below the poverty line, including 7.5% of those under age 18 and 4.1% of those age 65 or over.
In Eaton as of the census[2] of 2010, there were 8,407 people, 3,486 households, and 2,181 families residing in the city. The population density was 1,358.2 inhabitants per square mile (524.4 /km2). There were 3,903 housing units at an average density of 630.5 per square mile (243.4 /km2). The racial makeup of the city was 96.3% White, 0.6% African-American, 0.2% Native American, 1.0% Asian, 0.5% from other races, and 1.5% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 0.8% of the population.
There were 3,486 households of which 30.3% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 44.2% were married couples living together, 13.7% had a female householder with no husband present, 4.6% had a male householder with no wife present, and 37.4% were non-families. 32.7% of all households were made up of individuals and 15.5% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.33 and the average family size was 2.90.
The median age in the city was 40.4 years. 23.3% of residents were under the age of 18; 8% were between the ages of 18 and 24; 23.7% were from 25 to 44; 25.7% were from 45 to 64; and 19.1% were 65 years of age or older. The gender makeup of the city was 47.2% male and 52.8% female.
There were 3,274 households out of which 30.3% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 51.3% were married couples living together, 11.2% had a female householder with no husband present, and 33.3% were non-families. 29.1% of all households were made up of individuals and 14.0% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.37 and the average family size was 2.89.
In the city the population was spread out with 24.0% under the age of 18, 8.7% from 18 to 24, 27.5% from 25 to 44, 21.6% from 45 to 64, and 18.1% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 38 years. For every 100 females there were 89.6 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 85.6 males.
The median income for a household in the city was $37,231, and the median income for a family was $42,241. Males had a median income of $32,404 versus $24,006 for females. The per capita income for the city was $16,771. About 5.8% of families and 8.7% of the population were below the poverty line, including 10.0% of those under age 18 and 9.5% of those age 65 or over.
Statically, they look very similar they have similar numbers of family size, similar numbers of female lead homes with no husband present and median incomes that are close. The big difference is that Eaton has nearly 9 more males per 100 females than Finnytown. The other statistic that doesn’t show up in this a case like this is the number of those married homes that are from first marriages. Obviously Eaton has a much higher success rate of first marriages than Finnytown leading to fewer fragmented homes and less dependency on government subsidy. One town has a greater welfare culture than the other and produces a mentality in one group that is vastly different from the other.
It is this nasty little secret that Lois Lerner’s type hope to hide from public knowledge and the reason she campaigned against those same groups using the power of the IRS to alter elections and suppress the opinions of those people outside of the Beltway which she felt so comfortable protecting. Just because they are scared doesn’t make government worker reality valid, it just means they have a frame of mind that is weaker due to their dependency on government than the hardier types who live outside the reach of Lois Lerner and her government employees contributing to the daily erosion that takes place with a government issued check in whatever form.
I do not believe that there is a single lawyer, politician or lobbyist who could write the Declaration of Independence today in 2014. When modern progressives, socialists, and domestic terrorists declare that they believe the founding documents of America are “living documents” they are wrong—because the quality of the minds that could contribute in the ways they propose would only diminish the meaning. It is possible that John Adams, Ben Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson were among the greatest collected minds in human history when they gathered to write the Declaration. They were as proficient philosophically as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle only all existing at the same time and without the murder of one by a society protecting itself from their intellectual advancement. When those three gathered and Jefferson wrote the founding document, a new era of philosophic endeavor had begun in the wake of war. A unique window had opened and the three of them stepped in bringing the rest of the new country with them. The results were the Declaration of Independence that was presented and edited by the Continental Congress in the following days leading up to July 4th 1776.
Congress ordered that the draft “lie on the table“.[66] For two days Congress methodically edited Jefferson’s primary document, shortening it by a fourth, removing unnecessary wording, and improving sentence structure.[67] Congress removed Jefferson’s assertion that Britain had forced slavery on the colonies, in order to moderate the document and appease persons in Britain who supported the Revolution. Although Jefferson wrote that Congress had “mangled” his draft version, the Declaration that was finally produced, according to his biographer John Ferling, was “the majestic document that inspired both contemporaries and posterity.”[67]
On Monday, July 1, having tabled the draft of the declaration, Congress resolved itself into a committee of the whole, with Benjamin Harrison of Virginia presiding, and resumed debate on Lee’s resolution of independence.[68]John Dickinson made one last effort to delay the decision, arguing that Congress should not declare independence without first securing a foreign alliance and finalizing the Articles of Confederation.[69] John Adams gave a speech in reply to Dickinson, restating the case for an immediate declaration.
After a long day of speeches, a vote was taken. As always, each colony cast a single vote; the delegation for each colony—numbering two to seven members—voted amongst themselves to determine the colony’s vote. Pennsylvania and South Carolina voted against declaring independence. The New York delegation, lacking permission to vote for independence, abstained. Delaware cast no vote because the delegation was split between Thomas McKean (who voted yes) and George Read (who voted no). The remaining nine delegations voted in favor of independence, which meant that the resolution had been approved by the committee of the whole. The next step was for the resolution to be voted upon by the Congress itself. Edward Rutledge of South Carolina, who was opposed to Lee’s resolution but desirous of unanimity, moved that the vote be postponed until the following day.[70]
Here is the text as it appeared after those edits:
Introduction Asserts as a matter of Natural Law the ability of a people to assume political independence; acknowledges that the grounds for such independence must be reasonable, and therefore explicable, and ought to be explained.
In CONGRESS, July 4, 1776. The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen United States of America,When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
Preamble Outlines a general philosophy of government that justifies revolution when government harms natural rights.[77]
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Indictment A bill of particulars documenting the king’s “repeated injuries and usurpations” of the Americans’ rights and liberties.[77]
Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness of his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these states
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.Denunciation This section essentially finished the case for independence. The conditions that justified revolution have been shown.[77]Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.Conclusion The signers assert that there exist conditions under which people must change their government, that the British have produced such conditions, and by necessity the colonies must throw off political ties with the British Crown and become independent states. The conclusion contains, at its core, the Lee Resolution that had been passed on July 2.We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.Signatures The first and most famous signature on the engrossed copy was that of John Hancock, President of the Continental Congress. Two future presidents, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, and a father and great-grandfather of two other presidents, Benjamin Harrison, were among the signatories. Edward Rutledge (age 26), was the youngest signer, and Benjamin Franklin (age 70) was the oldest signer. The fifty-six signers of the Declaration represented the new states as follows (from north to south):[78]
It is unlikely that there is a single mind in all of Washington D.C. who could write those sentences presently let alone put them into a contextual sentence. Clearly those same minds are not capable of participating in a “living document” which evolves over time to accommodate changing circumstances. This is the actual sad part of our history is that the intention was that each generation would produce men and women like Adams, Franklin, and Jefferson, but this has not been the case. Instead, American society has regressed into the worship of stupidity and patted themselves on the back for passing gas in the form of a “fart.”
It would be my wish that I could associate with people like these Founding Fathers, instead of the weakened people of the modern age—people unable to understand the above document let alone produce another one of equal value. What is to be respected from this period in America is that intelligence was honored and valor was a part of daily existence and it is these traits that carried America to become the greatest country on earth. It was not the “come lately” types who spent years of their academic lives getting drunk, pursuing sex, and passing gas yet expecting to build their minds into understanding the need for the Declaration of Independence. Worse yet, to even entertain the belief that they were equal to men like the authors.
The sad state of our modern times is that intelligence is attacked and stupidity is worshipped, and it is for this reason alone that no modern man should even conceive of changing a single word of the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution—because they simply are not qualified—intellectually. No modern Supreme Court Justice, no lawyer—anywhere, and no current resident of the White House are able to meet the task of intellectual aptitude required to care for the founding documents let alone amend them. They are only capable of winning elections and moving money from one pocket to another—but they are not stewards of America equal to the founders—and authors of The Declaration of Independence.
The Overmanwarrior 
