Tag: western arts

Want to Stop Mass Shootings: Declare Democrats as insane and unable to buy guns and make smoking pot a serious crime

Here is the problem with the mass gun shootings, for one, we have chemical problems due to intoxicants, depression medicine, pot, and other bad combinations that are altering decision making. The other is purely political and how those interpretations are interpreted by young, and inexperienced kids. Both shooters, Patrick Crusius from the El Paso incident and Connor Betts from Dayton were young people. As the mainstream media tried to focus the attention on a “white nationalist” movement they are missing the real problem. For instance, both shooters were Democrats, or at least leaning in that direction and were likely very influenced by the victimization culture uttered by the current crop of presidential candidates. In Crusius’ case, he was more of a traditional progressive. Below was a part of the manifesto left behind by Crusius:

“In the near future, America will have to initiate a basic universal income to prevent widespread poverty and civil unrest as people lose their jobs (to automation). Joblessness is in itself a source of civil unrest. The less dependents on a government welfare system, the lower the unemployment rate, the better. Achieving ambitious social projects like universal healthcare and UBI would become far more likely to succeed if tens of millions of defendants are removed.”

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2019/08/el-paso-terrorist-is-a-hard-core-progressive-and-white-nationalist-wants-universal-income-and-universal-healthcare/

Connor Betts from Ohio was affiliated with an Against All Gods movement which is an atheist organization. He was also a pot smoker who wanted socialism and he wanted to vote for Elizabeth Warren. Those are all important aspects to the causes of school shootings. Obviously, the other shooter Crusius was a left leaning activist more on the side of what we might call an American Nazi, which to remind everyone is still on the political left of where the country is. The focus on racism that comes from the left on the political spectrum is exclusive to them. It has nothing to do with the conservative positions as they are known in America. What we are dealing with are kids who abuse drugs, have family issues, and have just come out of heavily liberalized educations in both public schools and college. They are very much the creations of the political policies of Democrats and have nothing to do with the Trump administration other than Democrats desperate to beat him in an election have turned up the utterances of desperation from their party likely pushing these pot smoking video game players out into the world with guns they know very little about to take matters in to their own hands.

Gun control isn’t even a consideration, first because constitutionally, it’s just not on the table. We have the Second Amendment to protect ourselves from losers like these guys. When political mismanagement occurs, which is certainly the case in producing young people like these killers, we need to be able to defend ourselves from them. While the police acted well in both shootings the fact remains that they can’t solve these problems fast enough, so the solution can never come from the state to end these problems. Only in dealing with the cause of these problems will, and blaming Donald Trump for pointing out the obvious problems that the political left have created, such as racism, socialist yearnings, (Conner Betts really wanted socialism) and the attacks against white males, can we begin to solve these problems. After all, if you are a white male and have been told that you are part of the problem, you have been trained to be a leftist in school, and are under the influence of drugs, what are you going to do, work hard to have a family, a steady job, and a house—or are you going to become a mass shooter and end your life on the earth in a blaze of glory?

Mass shootings are the result of failed public policy. When our society is failing in creating a youth that values life and American lifestyles you get losers like Patrick Crusius and Connor Betts. And there are likely thousands of them out there in a culture of millions, and any of them could be the next mass shooter. The state created these people so there is no way that the state could be expected to manage them through gun control or even mental deficiency detection. Any marijuana user who is also combining the effects of that drug with depression medication could be the next volatile bomb that will grab a gun and mass kill whoever is in their path.

But that has not been the narrative, the only thing anybody in the mainstream media wants to talk about is some law that might mask their failure in society in producing these kids in the first place, but it won’t solve the problem. Only in reestablishing a sense of morality will the problem of mass shootings be reduced. But there isn’t any hope when a kid like Connor Betts who doesn’t believe in any kind of god, our legal system has no reach for him. After all, how could he swear to tell the truth, nothing but the truth, so help him God? There is nothing to compel him to tell the truth to anybody so long as he has those kinds of beliefs, and once he takes such a radical step, there isn’t much to keep him from wanting to kill a bunch of people just to get revenge on his sister for some family dispute.

Specifically, Connor Betts was politically active indicating that he wanted people to vote blue, he supported “the squad” and he hated Donald Trump, instead he supported Elizabeth Warren. Given those criteria as we discuss the definitions of mental illness and if such a criterion should be established prior to gun sales we might as well propose that all Democrats are potential mass shooters and should not be able to purchase guns. Anybody calling themselves a Democrat based on the history of them should be considered a potential mass shooter and scrutinized as dangerous. If we really want to solve the problem of mass shooters, we need to look at the behavior that causes them and start acting on it.

What is most disappointing of all is that so many Democrats and other liberals jumped all over these mass shootings, which their policies caused, to propose more failures they want to impose. They are such a disaster as a group of people and based on their track record, should be considered a menace. What is even worse is that conservatives play into their hands by accepting guilt for the shooting that have nothing to do with reality. It is not immoral to support the Second Amendment. It is immoral to support pot smokers who are atheists and dream of destroying our entire civilization. Those people have decided they don’t want to be in America and live by its rules, they want to change it, to undo it, with either a godless value system or a universal anti-capitalist wage. And these attackers of our public gun free zones were born and bred in our education system and had their tempers poked by members of the Democratic party, and once they had been good and stoked, become the next killers to hit the news and attempt to get the dialogue on gun control which all Democrats want to see, for which they themselves are the threat.

Rich Hoffman

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The Cause of the Mass Shootings in El Paso, Texas, California, and Dayton, Ohio

It is pot and our culture of marijuana use that we need to be looking at in relation to the two shootings that have occurred within hours of each other, one in El Paso at a Walmart that killed 20 people and wounded 26. The other in downtown Dayton that killed at least ten and injured 16. In the Texas case the shooter was captured, he was a 21-year-old kid filled with spewing hate and apparently left a manifesto behind very conveniently tying the case together for authorities. In Dayton, the shooter was shot and killed by police eliminating the threat. There are still a lot of unknowns about the cases that will come out in the coming days and weeks, but in essence what we do know is that young people are largely involved in perpetrating these shootings and that as I’ve said before, the likely culprits are the sudden use of marijuana now openly consumed, that is causing this spike in violence among our youth. Gun control of any kind will not stop the carnage, and neither will avoiding the radical shoving of people into typically conservative areas by immigrants from communist and socialist countries just so Democrats can get their voting numbers up.

Under no circumstances should anybody cowardly shoot other people in such a violent way, there are no reasons for it whatsoever. None. Yet in places like El Paso where illegal immigration is literally invading their city and trying to turn their red state purple, people are very angry about the push by Democrats to overflow the border with liberal voters who are trying to change their country. It has nothing to do with skin color, but in the values of the people. The illegal immigrants just want a chance in life and where they came from typically are very oppressive socialist governments. So any freedoms they can get in the United States are many times greater than where they came from so they have nothing to lose. But for Americans, they see an invasion which is actually what it is. The immigration is being driven by failed government policies that are actually supported by Democrats to inspire them to flood the border. The evils that drive that push are promoted, not stopped, so that immigration will actually happen. So let’s get all that into context right out of the gate.

Then to make matters worse, and to actually drive up the body counts when these terrible shootings occure, we still have gun free zones such as inside shopping complexes and in bar districts like the situation in Dayton where we have taught people to duck and run waiting for authorities to arrive minutes later when seconds are needed to eliminate the threat. If we had a policy of stand and fight, guns would be friendly to a positive resolution as opposed to aggressor. In both recent shooting situations, a good guy with a gun present could have killed the aggressors quickly and with much less carnage. Our political system will say that we can’t have shootouts in our public places, yet the case remains that police can’t get to these shootings fast enough to lower the body counts. The solution is more gun coverage and much more use of the CCW in public places than we have now, not less.

But it is the cause of these shootings that we should all be concerned about because what we have is a massive failure of Democrat policy that is removing hope from young people and causing them to turn to violence to get their point across, and as a culture we have failed them. That was certainly the case with the 21-year-old kid Santino Legan who killed three at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in California. In spite of security at the event, Legan cut a slit in the security fence and stepped through to release carnage making reference to getting “high” left behind on his social media posts. In other shootings leading up to this event especially among young people they all had history of marijuana use, and we have to draw conclusions that Patrick Crusius who was also 21 years old and arrested near the shooting scene in El Paso also had some history with drugs and medication. The bars in Dayton certainly have with them an element of intoxication that is the root to most bad judgment. The cause of these evens is not the gun culture that is America, it is why there is a gun culture to begin with, as the desire for violence is ever present in the hearts of people.

Video games and movies are certainly contributing factors. I would say that it opens the mind up to such a violent situation even though most people don’t resort to violence to solve their problems. All it takes is a small percentage that will. Add to that the effects that depression drugs and actual psychedelic effects that something like marijuana can inspire in some people and we have a ripe condition for these mass shootings. Poor parental structures for young people to grow up in, liberalized educations, a bar toward adulthood that keeps getting pushed longer down the road to where age 21 isn’t considered old anymore. We keep these kids in a state of dependence for far too long and by the time they arrive into their 20s they have been treated as children too long. These are all very serious contributing circumstances that can’t be ignored considering that most of these mass shooters are all young people.

I have so little trust in our government that gun control isn’t on the table at all for me. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that there were agents of our own government sympathetic to the Democrat cause who worked chat rooms and other Facebook methods to push some of these disturbed kids toward violence to set the stage for upcoming elections and to try to throw a wet blanket on President Trump’s success at pulling the nation together toward America first goals. Yes, I think the agents of George Soros are that dirty and would do much like Charlie Manson did with his Helter Skelter murders. It wasn’t him who did the killings, he inspired others to do them instead. Obviously, these kids doing these mass shootings didn’t wake up one day and decide to throw their lives away with mass carnage. There were events that led up to such a radical decision and we simply can’t trust authorities to tell us what kind of internet activity led to the violence or if such evidence would ever make its way into court. The same bad Democrat radicalism that is pushing people from other countries to flood the American border for refuge is the same likely that is pushing these kids to act on their impulse to commit these violent acts. So let’s not get hung up on the poor people innocently shot. As tragic as that may be, there is a lot more violence and evil going on all over the world that is behind the push for the border, many rapes and economic conditions that are literally killing many thousands of people who will never have their names released on ABC News.

If people don’t want to see Wild West shootouts in front of bars in Dayton, or at festivals in California, or even shopping at Walmart in El Paso, Texas, then they should stop tampering with people’s lives to inspire political movement in their favor. They should outlaw intoxicants and promote strong family values and guidance. They should also make kids more responsible earlier, like at age 18 instead of forcing kids to be kids until they are 21 so they don’t get used to having adult bodies with the minds of children playing violent video games at all hours of the day with no consequences to their thoughts and actions. As I said before, with the condition of the youth what it is today, I would expect many more of these mass shootings. They are a failure of our society at the level of its foundation and the guilt for that falls squarely on Democrat policies that have created them. And until that is understood the only method for solving this problem is to have more people with more guns on the streets to protect innocent people when these things do happen. Because the number won’t go down. We are just getting started with this new generation and they are very disturbed and dangerous as a demographic group and its time we start dealing with that fact instead of avoiding it with cries for more gun control. Gun control only puts more power into the idiots who have caused this problem in the first place, and that would be a terrible injustice.

Rich Hoffman

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The Communist Swing from ‘High Noon’ to Trump: Why what Jerry Nadler is doing is far worse than McCarthyism

I think it goes without saying that I love John Wayne and westerns in general, but I have always disagreed with The Duke on his opinion about the great film High Noon. I have never seen it as an allegory on the blacklisting and the congressional investigations led by Joseph McCarthy, which many think it was. Yes, there were communists in Hollywood and yes it is true that Carl Foreman, the screenwriter of High Noon was one of them. The un-American activities were in full swing in 1952 led by Russia to penetrate Hollywood so essentially, they could get the control they have today during the years of Donald Trump. As I have listened to the American leftists reaction to Trump this past week and watched all the activity about the FBI and current hearings led by Jerry Nadler and the rest of the Democrats trying to impeach President Trump, I think we can look back at this documentary about the making of High Noon with a new eye toward history. Personally, I’m tired of hearing about how bad McCarthyism was on America and what impact blacklisting had on Hollywood. That cry baby stuff is long over. Conservatives are blacklisted much worse than any of the communists in Hollywood were then, so let’s revisit the morality of that time without the tears that the left have been hiding behind for years.

Truth be told, I spent the first twenty years of my adult life working toward a career in entertainment and planned to have a Hollywood film stint, and at several points I made major strides in that direction. But I am a Cincinnati conservative not that much unlike many stars who have made it in Hollywood quite spectacularly, but times have changed. If we were living in the days of High Noon where John Wayne set the standard and had the clout to run communists like Carl Foreman out of the country, as Wayne did before High Noon was even released, then I would likely be working in Hollywood right now. So in many ways I could lay claim to being blacklisted all of my adult life from the things I really enjoy. But unlike those complaining left leaning losers, I was able to do other things in my life and I have been successful in other aspects anyway. So what is there to cry about unless you are a one trick pony like most of Hollywood was and still is. They are probably worse today than they were in the time of High Noon’s release.

However, John Wayne made it very public that he didn’t like High Noon because he considered it un-American, and Lloyd Bridges was in an acting group that had lots of communists in it, which didn’t help. The American left loved High Noon because they thought of it as commentary on the McCarthy hearings, as Gary Cooper’s character Marshal Kane was a target for revenge for an outlaw that he had put in jail years ago, before his anticipated retirement. The train bringing the villain was to arrive at High Noon and the bandit was intent to bring his gang to the Marshal to kill him. The Marshal was planning to retire and marry his bride to be, but he is still the law in Hadleyville so he had an honorable obligation to fulfil his job as the lawman. Even though it may kill him. Knowing that a gang of four other killers are going to accompany the leader Kane tries to get other members of the town to help him, but nobody would.

The Soviet Union did not like High Noon because they felt it glorified the individual. Even though there were communists working on the film and the McCarthyism was in full swing in Washington D.C. it wasn’t enough for them and they made sure that even though the film won 4 Oscars because the American left wanted the film to do well, it wasn’t enough for the U.S.S.R. So, in that context it should be clear that John Wayne saw the big picture of the matter and just didn’t like High Noon viewing it as an un-American activity. Wayne was so adamant about his dislike for High Noon that he went into production for Rio Bravo as a direct pro-American answer. So, these are not new disputes these discussions about Trump’s swing back to the political right and waving the American flag around in reaction to socialist and communist propaganda. In the days of High Noon, it was denied that communism was even happening, but after the recent debates with the Democrats has shown, socialism and communism are very much the platforms of their party and their intention. So, the cat is out of the bag. Nobody is hiding it anymore. They were always trying to infect American culture with collectivist Marxism in some version or another. If it wasn’t John Wayne standing up to it, it is now Donald Trump. But the effort has always been there, and the debate is not new.

What has everyone in a panic now as opposed to the times of High Noon is that the political left felt that the pendulum was swinging in their direction in 1952, and it was. Leftist politics and open socialism were being debated, even if masked with different names and that swing has gone on for well over 50 years. But people are sick of it, and for anybody who saw Trump’s rally in Cincinnati in 2019 could attest to, people are now rejecting the political left. Trump is just the vehicle; the movement is taking a life of its own. For the same reasons that westerns were popular in 1952, conservative ideas are reemerging from the aftermath of failed socialist policies regardless of what political theater would like to believe.

The blacklisting that is going on currently with Facebook, Google, YouTube and many others is far worse for conservatives than it was ever in Hollywood as a direct reaction to McCarthyism. And its not John Wayne anymore trying to keep the pendulum from swinging to the left with more and more pro-American westerns. This time it is the left trying to fight the trend, the media that the communists did get control of. They couldn’t get the anti-American ideas to stick and patriotism is back in style and in spite all their screams of warning, are losing. Regardless of the political tendencies of the movie High Noon, I think it’s a great movie about society failing the individual yet the individual doing what needs to be done against all odds to do the right thing. It is certainly an American film especially in relation to the films of today which are far, far, far more left leaning than High Noon. But it is interesting given today’s political climate to look back at that time when the left was winning and building their case and crying about blacklisting. They have gone far further than anything John Wayne did or any other pro-American advocate during the periods of the Hollywood westerns. I could feel bitter about it, but as I said, I moved on to other industrious efforts. The left can’t and they are choking on their own crap and you know what, I think its funny. I am enjoying the show, because they deserve everything they are getting now. They started it. And its good to see them suffering now.

Rich Hoffman

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Why Nobody Can Beat President Trump: The great rally in Cincinnati

It was strange to watch the Trump rally in Cincinnati because it was the first one I haven’t been to once he has come to my hometown. But honestly, even with a VIP ticket, seeing him is an all-day event and I just couldn’t block out that kind of time. So what does that say about him and his presidency? When did anybody ever wait all day to see a president and fill a 20,000-person arena along the Ohio River an hour before the scheduled speaking time of 7 PM? At 6 PM in fact all the seats all the way up to the luxury suites were full except for a those who had left into the concourse to get food. The floor in front of the speaker’s stage was filled and there were still lines wrapped around the arena outside.

I was at that same rally when Trump last came to US Bank just a few weeks after the infamous Access Hollywood tapes that would have sunk any other candidate. But even then, when the media had wrote him off with a torpedo hit and as we have learned, many other sabotages, some by our own government, Trump still filled that arena even as Hillary Clinton couldn’t fill up a park just a few hundred yards down river. I thought then that Trump was going to win but at that time I was one of the few. Yet he packed that place and people were very happy to be there. It was a great experience that I have never forgotten, and it was amazing to see it duplicated just a few years later under much better circumstances. This time he was the president and suddenly everyone wanted to speak ahead of him. Even one of the best Supreme Court Justices in the country, Sharon Kennedy of Ohio spoke a few hours from Trump’s ostentatious patriotism on full display once he arrived.

So why, what is the reason that Trump can do this while nobody else can? Why are the Democrats still pushing an impeachment narrative even after all the premise for such a thing had legally been tossed out the window? Why? Well, the answer is celebrity and not just the kind that Hollywood produces. What Trump has built over the years is the real kind of celebrity that actually built Hollywood at a distant part of their history, which they have lost. Celebrity is when a person, an actor, or a representative comes to embody the unspoken thoughts and words of a significant number of the population. That is why Trump had crowds in October of 2016 when Hillary Clinton could barely fill a spot 10 times smaller. Hillary Clinton in her final push tried to bring in celebrities to push her over the top yet couldn’t. Trump won the election anyway even though the forces against him were phenomenal. And at this present rally in the summer of 2019 people saw in Trump parts of themselves that they didn’t have a voice in any other way. So, they lined up to see him making an entire day of the event and they were happy to do it. They are an untouched market in America that no professional consultants had spent time trying to understand. They still don’t get it, but US Bank was the measure of their failure. It filled when the media thought there weren’t any supporters left and not only did Trump fill it easily, he did so hours before the show even started.

Think about what people were waiting to see, a 70 something year old man, a politician, talk for an hour or so. There was no music to accompany the show, the whole thing was just Trump talking about current events and world affairs. There is no conventional wisdom that could explain it, so unconventional study is needed to even begin to comprehend it. There isn’t any Democrat in the United States or in the world who could do what Trump did in Cincinnati or anywhere, even telling basically the same speech over and over again over the years. To be a celebrity who can generate that much excitement, who in their right mind thinks that anybody is going to beat him in 2020? I said in in 2016, nobody. And I’ll say it again now, there isn’t anybody who is going to beat Trump for a return to the White House in 2020. It is astonishing that an arena that big could be filled by anybody. Carrie Underwood sold out that arena, but that is for a full concert. What Trump has done is simply incredible.

Celebrity is a vote all its own. Even with the cheating that Democrats are known for throughout history, whether it is stuffing ballots, getting dead people to vote, or trying to qualify illegal aliens and prisoners to tip the scales in their favor, they have nobody like Trump. Not a single celebrity in Hollywood. No athlete, no musical artist. Nobody. People showed up to see Trump speak for over an hour and they spent the day doing it because they wanted to. And in a country where votes still matter, even when cheating does go on, people are speaking with sheer numbers of support even as the media and establishment culture tries to suppress that information from them. When Trump speaks to people directly people reward him with support, because that’s the only voice they really have—the celebrity that they gave to Trump because he represents their true values.

Deservedly, those who work against Trump should be concerned. Those who have taken their shots to end the Trump presidency made the whole story about him as a person, but what they failed to understand was that Trump is the representative of the people who elected him. People don’t follow Trump as some dictator they follow him because he represents who they are and without him they have no other voice. Enemies of Trump don’t want to just stop him because they disagree with him, but they want to silence the voices that back him. They don’t care what those voices really want out of their government, they want to pretend that they are in charge and can lead them toward some progressive objectives.

Those against the Trump presidency are in denial of what really makes Trump tick. In a representative government has there ever really been anybody who really was more authentic and representative than President Trump? Who thinks that people stand all that time to see an old man talk about current events? Its not so much him, but that he is their vehicle to bring forth their own voices, and for that they will wait all day for just a short shot in the spotlight. I have seen those events before, but this latest rally in Cincinnati was different, it was even bigger and more spectacular, and more of a statement about the real state of the nation. It wasn’t a racist event, it wasn’t a dictator, it was just a celebrity who represented the real people of the nation and no representative from the other political side can go toe to toe with him. And for that, it was an event to celebrate and be grateful for.

Rich Hoffman

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The Democrats Hate Profit: Working against the American Flag for change none of us want

When people ask me why I am writing a book about business, specifically about the necessity of executive culture in all places of employment, called The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business, well, the debates by the Democrats that have taken place over two days during this past week tell the whole story. There are many aspects of American culture that have been pulled into this anti-profit path that was very obvious during the debates, and for those who do get it, they have forgotten why profit is important to our culture and really don’t know how to defend it from criticism. So, I feel compelled to help settle the matter any way I can. Although I have been talking about the socialist slide of Democrats for many years, and how our schools and most government interactions support the Marx theories, even I was surprised how open the Democrat candidates were to reveal themselves as socialists, perhaps even communists. Times have certainly changed and I’m not at all happy to have been proven right on the matter.

Profit is not a dirty word; it is a method of payment. Profit is how a company gets paid for services rendered, after they’ve covered all their other expenses. There needs to be something to benefit their time and energy on whatever it is they are making. If they are rich, then that means that lots of different people, or companies want to give them profit for the offerings they provide. Yet at the core of the Democrat platform that protests against the notion of profit is that very value system that points out good work from bad conduct. Bad conduct isn’t very profitable, so that value system is something that Democrats wish to get rid of, so they can continue to build a dependent class of people who will always vote them into power and if you think about it the whole notion of such a thing is disgusting.

Getting back to President Trump’s assertion that people who protest the American flag and the motives of American life should go back to wherever they came from, whether they are first generation immigrants or third, if you are not honoring the American flag and what it stands for, then probably you should go to a country that endorses your political theory. Because as American citizens we all have an obligation to at least agree on the basic foundations of American life and what they are. And what they are is that we are a for profit country that is always looking to expand as an economy. If we can’t agree on that basic thing, then we can’t be said to all love America. I don’t think people who protest the idea of profit could be said to love their country, not if all they want to do is to change it into something else.

I don’t think Democrats were always this way, I grew up around a lot of farmers and many of them were what we might call Kennedy Democrats. They were certainly flag waving Americans, they understood market prices for their crops and the needs to save up money to buy a new tractor or some chickens so they could have eggs because a fox got into the chicken coup. There may have been some of these Marxist type Democrats out there in the world, apparently in our universities and larger education system, but we didn’t see them at parades on the 4th of July and at Memorial Day festivities. This hatred for American profit is a new thing that I would say comes directly out of our education system and has been a massive failure based on how much tax money we have wasted trying to educate our next generation youth. If the result of all that money is what was on stage this week with Democrat presidential candidates, then the whole experiment has been a massive waste of time.

The debates were supposed to be a kind of job interview for an executive seat in our government to manage the country. It’s a CEO job in official function and the candidates should have treated it that way. But if you are all about anti-profit, then you really aren’t wanting to do the job as an American CEO of a high government title. You can’t have a political philosophy that wants to undo everything then turn around and declare that they deserve an equal seat at the table of consideration if what they are proposing seeks to destroy the country we all love. And that’s essentially what the Democrats want to do. Why would you want to change something that has worked so well for so many people? Their argument is that it doesn’t work for all people. Well, show me some other place in the world that does do better for all people, where so many diverse people can come together as they do in the United States and accomplish anything, let alone the most powerful economy on the planet. And the reason for all that goodness is that America is a country that supports profit, the work done by people well and are rewarded for that work in such a fashion.

Secretly what Democrats want is for the government to decide winners and losers for the power of the vote, not for the effort of hard work and good conduct. When they protest profit, they are protesting a reward system that promotes good behavior instead of a centralized authority. When the government is big and has the power to give out wages whether earned or not, we have fundamentally changed the nature of America into something else and that is a grounds for conditional action on behalf of those who love our flag as it is today.

I associate with lots of different people every day. Some of them come from all over the world and have lots of different ideas about how things should be. I talk to liberals even though they have values that seem like they belong on another world. And I know lots of people who call themselves conservatives at all places along the degrees of value. But what they all have in common which makes them so I can at least speak to them is that they understand profit and loss. None of the people on the debate stage for the Democrat representative for the Executive Branch of our government did, they were completely unrelatable and it makes you wonder if they are even aware of it. You would think they would be. But maybe they are so out of touch that they just don’t get it. And these are the best that Democrats have to offer?

It is further astonishing that this same group of people have made it so that we can’t even talk and that people like me are considered radical by their crazy definitions for things. Again, it is the education system that has paved the way for this mentality but when it comes down to real people working and living in the real world, the support doesn’t go too far for these radical ideas. So why do they have them? Because they just don’t get it? Or that they are so radical and polluted in their educations that they can’t see the forest for the trees? Or perhaps, and this is what I think, they simply hate America and want to destroy it for us all. That is the question of this election and our tolerance for it will be decided on election day.

Rich Hoffman
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What Comes Around Goes Around on the Wild, Wild Frontiers of Thought and Culture

It’s always a good day for me to attend the Annie Oakley Festival in Greenville, Ohio where I rejoin old friends and meet some new ones at that annual event always set during the last weekend of July. In many ways I am happiest during that period because the world is as I’d like it to be and I get to dress the way I’d like for the event. This year was a little different however because its one of those transition periods for me. I’m in the middle of writing my new book, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business and have been working on several themes that were born right there in Greenville over the last several decades. As a lover of Ohio history and of frontier life in general I find great solace in the small towns up and down Rt 127, from Hamilton, Ohio all the way up Celina on the Grand Lake St. Mary. Lebanon, and Eaton come to mind as well, and of course Greenville itself nestled there in God’s country with the smell of corn dogs and ice-cold Coke offered from the various venders. But more than anything I enjoy competing with those old and new friends and pushing myself in ways that I don’t get to do in regular life, and the results are always rewarding, such as in this very close example shown below of our Bullwhip Fast Draw competition during the finals.

Yes, it’s fast. I have been practicing Cowboy Fast Draw for quite a long time now and have a pretty good feel for how fast is fast. The events shown in our Bullwhip Fast Draw are around .600 of a second down to about .450, almost as fast as the pistol shooters who were also there at the event. I spent quite a lot of time with them as well. Yet it amazes me how fast the Bullwhip Fast Draw competition has become, and how fast we have become in conducting all the various steps literally in the blink of an eye. For a lot of people, the blink of an eye is about .015 of a second. So, we are moving very fast these days in performing a task that really should be nearly impossible. But you never really know until you start pushing yourself with competition which is one of the big themes in my new book.

I am an optimist, really an unshakable one. I’ve seen more than my share of tragedy and heartbreak, but my optimism has always been intact no matter what’s going on. Over the years this Annie Oakley event has been that reset period for me that no matter what has been occurring, it gave me an opportunity to be around people who aren’t losers and activists of malice and just enjoy good people in a good flag waving country. Many years ago, I broke away from the entertainment aspects of my relationship with the western arts and went to apply my skills to real life problems, that were very controversial. It was quite a thing to do before Donald Trump was president, but now isn’t considered so radical, because the country is snapping back into shape, thankfully. The evidence is everywhere. This year at our Western Showcase event a really good Lone Ranger impersonator stopped by and did a show which I enjoyed quite a lot. As I listened to the Lone Ranger creed from him, I couldn’t help but think of myself and some of the decisions I had made along the way leading up to that moment.

In 2004 I released the book The Symposium of Justice which featured a bullwhip cracking vigilante that was at war with the corruption of his hometown. But in the years thereafter I found that many of my themes were quite real and that as an author, I couldn’t just write about them, I wanted to be the real-life character of my stories. So, I turned my skills to the real-life problems of my community and many reading here know the rest of the story. Up until Donald Trump emerged from the Tea Party to become President of the United States, I felt I needed to be the real-life characters I had written about. But that has changed due to the sudden shifting of the winds. The western arts no longer feel like a dying thing as it used to, but something that is reemerging and becoming new again. That makes me very happy. Not only does the world need it, but it confirms many of the things about people that I have long suspected and those are the clear contents of my new book that will likely come out next year.

It has been sad that so many people who still believe in things like the Lone Ranger’s Creed have stayed out of the fight that has needed to be fought. I couldn’t just sit around and think about it. I wanted to do something about it and I am proud that I have. But hearing the Lone Ranger impersonator go through the creed this year in front of our audience was for me very refreshing. Some of my favorite quotes are “That all men are created equal and that everyone has within himself the power to make this a better world.” And “in being prepared physically, mentally, and morally to fight when necessary for that which is right.” Or, “That God put the firewood there, but that every man must gather it and light it himself. Those are all good quotes and who could argue them? Well, Democrats for one, and many of today’s youth who get their morality from Grand Theft Auto rather than the Masked Man as they used to.

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Another good day in my favorite clothes. #life #family

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That is why I love the Annie Oakley event so much. It is a break from the disappointments of today’s culture and the youth being born from it, from the primitive cravings of body piercings, tattoos and shaky morality. Of loose sexual standards and a proclivity toward drugs and intoxication. From lazy losers who want socialism over capitalism and champions of expanding government who will issue them mailbox paychecks for just sitting around and letting mother government drop food in their mouths without doing anything to deserve it. For one day a year I get a break from all that and I cherish it tremendously. If I could have every day like the days I get in the middle of God’s country every year in Darke County I would take it eagerly. Unfortunately, that is not our reality, but it should be. Most of the people who go and participate in those events there don’t have the same kind of reflections that I do. They just go and enjoy the festivities without giving it much thought. But not me, I see the potential and reflect on what we used to do well and how we could do it again. And perhaps a new day is emerging. Whatever comes I at least feel good about what I’ve done to make the world better, which I will always do. But I get the feeling that the world is getting more favorable to those grand old traditions and that the thugs and losers of life aren’t winning any more, they are being swept away into the garbage heaps of history, where they belong and that makes me the happiest of all. For the first time in many years I think that tomorrow will be better than yesterday, and that is very encouraging.

Rich Hoffman

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We Have an Obligation to Attack Enemies, both Foreign and Domestic

I have planned to take a vacation from politics and this forum so that I could write my new book, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business, which is coming along nicely. However, this recent debate between the Trump administration and the four progressive insurgents Cortez, Omar, Pressley, and Tlaib bring up an important point that Democrats are going to have to get used to. Watching and listening to their comments, and those of the other liberal presidential candidates that have come in in their defense after President Trump lacerated them at a North Carolina rally, we need to talk about a few things. Trump didn’t just act correctly in calling out the anti-American rhetoric that has been frequently discharged by the four women, and many others for that matter, but we are all expected to do as Trump has done, and in doing so, we would be by no means acting as racists, or bigots, but as people of value who love our country and are justifiably pissed off by those who show their open hostility toward the values most of us embrace as “Americans.”

It is ridiculous to suggest that we are supposed to allow people, who happen to be women, or people of color, whether or not they are American citizens or not, to trash talk our country without some retaliation. It’s just not in the realm of considerations. In no way should any of these women, or Democrats expect to get a free pass to do and say whatever they want without people getting angry about it. After all, isn’t that what they were trying to do all along? Omar, and Cortez particularly have been very bold in attempting to make as many people angry at America as possible, what did they think was going to happen, that they’d be allowed to hide behind their femininity and their race without anybody answering their challenge? When the crowd broke out chanting during the Trump rally in North Carolina to “send her back” meaning Omar, they were perfectly correct to express their opinion, just as the four progressive Democrats had. They don’t get a free pass to act because they are minorities. Why would they even think such a thing?

I have a son-in-law who came to America and gained citizenship to marry one of my daughters and I admired the work he did to go through everything. I was particularly touched during the swearing in which all politicians must go through at some point, and many others, where an oath to protect the notion of our Constitution is made. I’ve heard it a million times but during his swearing in it had hit me particularly hard, when the lines, “I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” The word “domestic” rang a bell because we were seeing increased terrorist activity coming to our nation at that time, in the years before the Trump administration entered the White House and it was very obvious that some of those terrorist cells, particularly those finding refuge in ISIS were American citizens who had gone astray. Just having an American citizenship wasn’t enough to make you an American. You had to also support the way of life that being an American required. That meant capitalism. The Constitution along with all the Bills of Rights. It meant at least respecting the flag that brought all of us from all over the globe together to make America great. The freedom of speech didn’t mean you could just march around our neighborhoods burning the American flag and preaching on about Communism without someone kicking your ass. Those are the rules and we are all mandated to do so, by the Constitution when we see that domestic enemies are attacking our way of life.

I have known many media personalities over the years, and honestly, they are not the most inquisitive bunch. You won’t find them reading books about history in a Waffle House at 4 AM in the morning, the way I was when I was there age. They are more excited about talking to their friends on Facebook and finding out where the next music festival is, or some drunken orgy. Unfortunately, these are the people who interpret these events for us most of the time, so we have not been looking at people who speak against America as “domestic enemies” but they are. Nike made themselves into a domestic enemy when they picked Kaepernick’s position over the shoes of Betsy Ross. That soccer star for the women’s team completely overshadowed their great victory by using her fame to debase America life as anti-gay and racist when it was our great nation that gave her the ability to use her skills to their best effect on a world stage. Megan Rapinoe could at least have said “thank you.” Instead, she made herself into a “domestic enemy.” Her choice, but the choice was clear putting the burden on what to do about it on us all.

I just traveled the Carolinas and spent some time in Gatlinburg, Tennessee for a couple of days and even for me, I was quite taken by the patriotism displayed there. I couldn’t help but notice that no Democrats are having rallies at the convention center in Gatlinburg. But if Trump went there maybe hundreds of thousands of people would show up and pack the streets. I saw lots of Trump bumper stickers and lots of flag waving, and it was the kind of thing I have not seen represented in the news for over twenty years. I don’t know what the Democrats are thinking these days, but that span of the South from Charleston to Lexington Kentucky, and I would add, on up into Ohio and Indiana, is as pro Trump as it gets. And its not Trump himself I don’t think, but because Trump represents them Constitutionally. Rather than them having to take up arms to fight off domestic enemies who the media fails to identify for them, they are happy to support Trump to prevent the unneeded bloodshed. But yes, the situation is that serious, who would think otherwise?

Honestly, these progressive attackers, Bernie Sanders included are getting off lucky. Thankfully we have a system of government that does a pretty good job of preventing violence from happening when domestic enemies present themselves. Free speech usually defeats them when it is allowed to work. But Google, Facebook and all the media companies have involved themselves into censorship to allow a false platform to exist for these anti-American progressive ideas, because for some dumb reason, they think they can trick the system into buying into their dumb ideas. But all those actions have been anti-America because they are attacking the very foundations of American life that we are all supposed to agree on, justice for all, economic activity for all, and common decency to everyone. However, among those values are that the winner takes all because that is how the best and brightest among us elevate our entire society. An attack on that system is an attack on our way of life and we are obligated to defend it from domestic enemies when those events occur. And for their own benefit, those domestic enemies of America, they are lucky that it is only Trump calling them out during election debate. It could be much, much worse, because the people who put Trump in power are very much in the majority, and they are pretty pissed off with the attacks against their rights to guns, against their churches, their energy consumption, their basic values. And it wouldn’t take much to turn them into very angry soldiers in the streets toward justice.

Rich Hoffman

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What I Like about George Lang: He’s the perfect compliment to the Trump administration at the state level, and takes the Dirt out of Politics

One aspect of this modern Republican Party that has evolved over the last decade in Butler County is that it is very effective and surprisingly unified. I had been thinking about it for a while, but the matter became quite clear for me at the launch event for George Lang’s run for senate in Ohio. While there I found myself associating in a friendly way with many people, I would have called rivals years ago. Suddenly they were friends largely because the party had united so well behind the Trump administration. Ten years ago, we called more liberal Republicans RINOs while I ran more with the Tea Party Crowd. Then during the primaries, everyone had their various picks. Some liked Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, or his dad Ron. Others liked the way the Bush family ran things. I was from the very beginning a Trump supporter, so there were obvious disagreements when Republicans came together for something like a public announcement by a great politician like George Lang. But at this most recent event I couldn’t help but notice how unified everyone was and it was good to see.

After George made his announcement and many politicians came forth to give their endorsement and tell stories of why they supported George through testimonials, seen in the video above, Sherriff Jones and I reminisced a bit about the last ten years while walking through the parking lot of Miami University’s Hamilton campus. As we talked it became obvious to me that the Trump presidency, which has deep roots into Butler County, had gone a long way to uniting Republicans in a way I could have only dreamed of. And it was only natural that a person like George Lang could build bridges in a positive way with all the different types of people that were in the Republican Party and get so many people to come forward to say such nice things. The Trump administration in all its genius had united Republicans in ways that just weren’t possible prior to 2016 and I was very happy to see it.

During all this contemplation I was thinking about why I liked George Lang so much and had for such a long time. I was very happy to hear that he was running for a senate seat, but I wasn’t sure why until after his announcement event. It wasn’t just that I liked him as a person, it was for another reason, a more important one. I have been involved in politics at many different levels for several decades, and it has been my choice to stay on the outside as much as possible to avoid too much corrosive contact. But I have never felt that way about George, whom I have now known for well over a decade. Even in the hardest of times George has always been a solid person and loyal to free market ideas, especially when they weren’t all that popular. Yet to my eyes he has always been constantly a good person, and that was rare in politics.

A lot of my reason for staying on the outside looking in, even when the door was wide open to step inside, was that I have always viewed politics as a dirty business and honestly, I don’t like the dirt. I’m happy to sling mud when challenged, but personally, I’d rather think about big things and find ways to bring about larger concepts to people. So politics just wasn’t conducive to that kind of thing. However, over time, George has pounded away his own kind of honesty in politics and it has shown to be a different way of doing business as a politician. George can still go out and raise the money it takes to run big campaigns, and associate with people all along the very fine edge of the political spectrum without becoming so disagreeable that relationships are no longer possible. George had found a way to work within the political spectrum of Republican politics at the local and state level without losing himself along the way and to me that is enormously encouraging.

Political enemies of George might want to roll their eyes at my assessment, but I have been with George through some perilous times and I know the guy well. I know his family and a dishonest person just can’t cut it with those kinds of relationships. George is an honest person who stands by the people close to him through thick and thin and oozes sincerity. Sure, there is always someone out there who wants him to do something that he doesn’t want to do, or that he disagrees with, but he never seeks to make an enemy out of them. Yet he has a tendency to stand resolute and that does make enemies. But that’s part of the territory. You can know a person by the way they are when the cameras are not around and nobody else is looking. And in those conditions, George Lang is the same good person. That ultimately is why I like George Lang so much; he takes the dirt out of politics.

George was going to be successful in politics whether or not President Trump ever entered the White House, but due to the current political circumstances, a politician and businessman like George Lang is poised to do much greater things than ever before. Under the Trump administration good people like Lang have far more clout than the back-room dealers of yesteryear and that was as much of a relief to the other Republicans giving testimony about George’s qualifications for higher office as it was me. Truly we are experiencing a new day in politics, something that none of us had ever seen. Trump’s presidency had like a vacuum sucked up all the disjointed disagreements and plotting for power that used to go on for the sake of obtaining any elected office and replaced it with a sincere effort to be a part of a greatness in keeping America great now that it has been built that way once again.

There is tremendous room in the years to come to make Ohio one of the great economic powerhouses of the world and George Lang sees it, he has always seen it. I remember a very dark time when he and I stood in the parking lot of a restaurant and contemplated the universe and how unfair it seemed at the time. Neither of us thought we’d be able to do much to help it. But George has always been the same person, from that hard time to the opulent present, he’s had the kind of integrity that is contagious to other people and a real desire to help people reach their full potential in life. And for George, that is as a senator doing great work now that the Trump administration has set the pace for allowing such audacious dreams to happen.

You can tell a lot about a person by the type of people who will actually come forward and provide an endorsement, and on that day a wide range of people who have been in public office for a long time came forward and said nice things about George, and the event was a great unifier. If one little event can show that kind of solidarity toward purpose, just think what a senate term in the Ohio Statehouse could provide. The prospect is very exciting and is something we can all look forward to with George Lang as the 4th District Senator in Ohio.

Rich Hoffman

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I Fully endorse George Lang for the Senate District 4 seat in Ohio

I was quite excited to learn that George Lang was running for the Senate seat that Bill Coley had been occupying in Ohio for several years. The seat itself was terming out and George let me know that on Monday at noon he was going to announce his run for it, and it brought a lot of joy to me. I first learned of his candidacy while on vacation with my family in Charleston, South Carolina touring sites that many were reviewing as the best in the world. I kept hearing while on my weeklong stay in Charleston that this neighborhood, this beach, this restaurant, this shipping lane, this and that were the best anywhere. I had to admit that everything was very nice. Property values were certainly great, and shipping vessels seemed to come into the harbor every 30 minutes loaded to their max. Even at 3 in the morning from our Mt Pleasant home I could hear the cranes working and I found all that economic activity very exciting. Yet the town of Mt Pleasant across the harbor from downtown Charleston was quiet and very chic at that time of night, just as it was all other hours of the day. The people there were prosperous and happy, no crime was in sight. Prosperity tends to do that to a community. So I was a little sad to leave and come home, but then for comparison as my family hit Cincinnati starting at Florence then going up I-71 to avoid the traffic on I-75 it was a startling comparison which culminated into our last moments of the journey travelling down Butler County Regional Highway where for as far as the eye could see, there was prosperity, especially in West Chester. After coming from an extremely wealthy area full of vibrant economic activity, it was obvious that my hometown of Butler County, Ohio was even greater and that is something the rest of the nation hasn’t been talking about. And for the last twenty years, it was my friend George Lang who has had a tremendous hand in that success, which was why I was elated that he was running for that Ohio Senate seat.

It goes without saying then that I endorse George Lang for the Senate District 4 seat in Ohio, fully. I could tell stories all day about why he’s qualified, but the best part of his resume is in this opening paragraph. I had spent a week in one of America’s most prosperous communities and coming directly home to West Chester, where I work, and Liberty Township where I live it becomes obvious that we have it better than most anywhere else in the country and that is due to the very pro-business environment that Lang has championed for many years starting as a trustee in West Chester. Even when Lang was outvoted 2 to 1 on most issues in West Chester by the much more liberal trustees who were there at the time, Lee Wong being one of them, George managed to be a change agent for the betterment of business and the results are obvious today, and the spill over has poured over into neighboring Liberty Township and other regions connected directly to West Chester very positively.

I remember well when George benefited from Mark Welch getting elected into that second trustee seat knocking out a longtime incumbent so that a second vote could be obtained, and real growth could occur for business. For a few years George Lang and Mark Welch opened West Chester to a very positive pro-business culture that is now carrying over into our current conditions which rival any of the best in the entire country and now George wants to bring that culture to all of Ohio. When George was elected into the 52nd House of Representative seat, this was his ultimate goal which he has been working toward. However, as a Senator, he will have much greater leverage to make that pro-business platform more prominent and to take it above the noise of all the other political matters that permeate the state.

George really doesn’t have any competition for this spot, his rivals during the upcoming primary are Candice Keller out of Middletown, who I think is a wonderful person. But when it comes to experience, George has many of the same positions as her on conservative ideas, but his understanding of business and his pro-business platform just puts him on a higher level. Then as I’ve said about Lee Wong, he’s the kind of guy who is a liberal in a conservative area. He has no choice but to run as a Republican. His policy decisions are very much that of a Democrat. If he were running for office in Hamilton County or even Dayton, he’d be a Democrat without question. It was Lee who stood in the way of many of the growth ideas that George wanted to implement in West Chester. I seem to remember Wong’s campaign slogan was that you “Couldn’t go wrong with Wong.” Well, yes you can, in a big way. He’s a nice guy but he’s not on the level of Lang, in any category. In many ways Lee stood in the way of growth, it was George and Mark who broke through his resistance to give West Chester the great prosperity that it sees today.

So, if there is a theme to all this, management does matter and who we elect into these positions has a major impact on all our lives. Obviously in Charleston South Carolina they have a lot of good things going on. Essentially there they have a deep and rich history to draw from which has put politics on the efforts of preserving that history, and not getting in the way of businesses wanting to capitalize off that deep history. In West Chester, Ohio the situation was harder, while Butler County does have a great history going back to before the Revolution, just as Charleston does, we had to be good the old-fashioned way, in the middle of the country with great highway access. We needed our politicians to make the most of those advantages with low cost compliance and protections on upfront investment for businesses. In West Chester, George Lang alone for a long time, then later with a good support staff from a very good Republican Party presence, have created an economic boom that plugs straight into the Trump administration. There is a reason that President Trump enjoys coming to the southern Ohio area so much, and George Lang is more a part of that success than just about anybody. Not in what he has done, but in what he hasn’t.

Most politicians measure their success by what bills they sponsor and ultimately by how much they grow government. In George’s case, it’s the opposite, he measures his success by how much he can get government out of the way of business, allowing them to spend their time and energy on being profitable, which then allows a high quality of living for everyone. For people who have lived in the Butler County area for many years, its easy to take for granted just how good it is. But if you have traveled, the benefits are obvious in comparison. I am very excited to see George Lang do for Ohio as a Senator what he has done for West Chester. I personally think Ohio has an opportunity to become one of the great economic powerhouses of the world and it will take people like George to make it happen. So he has my endorsement and then some. I simply can’t wait to get him in that seat so he can start the work, for which we will all benefit.

 

Rich Hoffman

 

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The Merits of Dueling

The Merits of Dueling:

As I have said, I have been working on a new book called the Gunfighter’s Guide to Business and I’m about halfway through it.  For my readers of a long time here who have been sending me a lot of emails missing the daily articles, they will return.  But I offer this little sample of this “gunfighter” project to give a taste of what is to come.

The concept of getting “satisfaction” from a personal insult went a long way to establishing honor and proper conduct among business transactions, in the time before modern rules as we know them today. As we have seen often where various religions and their value are not unified, and therefore cannot be expected to hold up in a court of law, there needs to be a mechanism that brings about honor and to hold it into the context of moral conduct where villainy will quickly grow like a weed in a garden of dreams. Dueling in the classic sense, especially in the New World during the time of the American Revolution was an answer to this problem. And if there is an argument against the American Constitution for changes, it was in the original rules of the nation that mechanisms of honor were already established before the courts were needed.

In doing business in the orient, particularly in Japan where honor is still a respected trait, business transactions are accelerated because the interactions mean something with one another. This is obvious at the airports around Tokyo among men and women as respect is a universal language that makes interactions between people start on common ground. In the West we have allowed our own culture of respect to drift away into the more centralized regulation of the state which outlawed the practice of dueling essentially so that lawyers could profit off the instillation of justice. The cost was that individual satisfaction for an insult did not get the respect it deserved while the emphasis was on protecting society from itself by settling matters in a court of law. This has led our culture to adapt into a more passive aggressive society where trust isn’t always easy to find in other people. It could be argued that we were all better off when we tried to openly kill each other to protect a slight against our individual names.

Dueling was so common at the start of America that the governor of South Carolina wrote a book on it to make sure everyone did it right called The Code of Honor: Or Rules for the Government of Principals and Second in the Art of Dueling in 1834 by John Lyde Wilson. Dueling in the time of the Revolutionary War was quite common. While it was slowly going out of style at the start of the invention of a republic form of federal government once George Washington took office, in the South, particularly in Charleston, South Carolina where so many important battles occurred in defining freedom during the start of the new nation, dueling was so common that the governor felt compelled to create some legal means of settling disputes, which sounds barbaric compared to our modern legal system, but in hindsight seemed to generate more responsible people on an individual level. This certainly helped in business commerce, because if a business deal went bad, the parties may find themselves in the streets fighting to the death to obtain their satisfaction.

The important aspect of satisfaction is that the emphasis was on the individual reputations of the participants. It wasn’t some third party “state” that decided justice, it was the people at the heart of the conflict, and in many ways, society was more honorable. People had to treat each other individually better as a result. The more the states intruded on management of the affairs of people the more passive aggressive disputes have become leaving business conduct to suffer greatly. After the Civil War it was particularly immigrants from the South who moved West in search of gold and other opportunities, and they took with them the concept of dueling that had been very much a part of early American life. Dueling with fast draw had with it a way of bringing honor where there wasn’t yet law and it forced people to treat each other better and more honorably which is why there is still reverence for it.

At the state level we can all see today that the concept of taking honor and responsibility for good conduct away from individuals has been a mistake. While dueling was a violent concept the amount of people who died from it were arguably much less frequent than the kind of violence we see in modern times. That is why thinking in the way of the gunfighter is better than in the modern context of leaving disputes to be settled by those not directly responsible for the conduct, such as lawyers and the state as a legal entity. These days instead of getting satisfaction for an honor tainted we say “see you in court” instead of settling the matter right then and there. Then of course those who can pay for the best lawyer become the winners in most cases and the state enjoys the revenue and job opportunities that come from settling disputes. But what is lost is the individual responsibility for the actions taken and the merit of an honorable exchange. Taking the example of the famous duel between General Gladsten and General Howe in 1778, both Generals in the Revolution and were in a dispute over troop possession. They took to the streets of Charleston, South Carolina where many such duels were taking place at the time and when the time came stared each other down waiting for the other to make a move. After taunting each other for a good bit of time finally General Howe fired his pistol and clipped the ear of Gladsten. Gladsten in response, who was thought to be the John Adams of the south and inventor of the famous “Don’t Tread on Me” flag deliberately fired his shot into the ground inviting Howe to try again. Eventually the two men shook hands and that settled their dispute with only a minor injury occurring to Gladsten’s ear. Otherwise, the business between two major Revolutionary War figures was settled respectfully, something that certainly wouldn’t have occurred if the two had fought it out in court with lawyers acting as their pistols and fancy words spoken in legal jargon as bullets.

The point of the matter is not that dueling is a desired trait, or even that we should bring it back in the form that it was. Killing another person isn’t a desirable outcome for any dispute, but the finality of it tended to put in the participant’s minds the seriousness of an issue and this mindset certainly set the West and its expansion ablaze with activity that couldn’t have been regulated by any legal system at the rate that human ambition was expanding at the time. Honor was preserved by the potential for dueling and this threat allowed for proper respect when a nation needed it most. We could learn a lot from this period today where honor among business transactions is desperately lacking, particularly within the American borders. Other countries have their honor driven rituals and it is noticeable during business transactions. In the United States however, we have allowed our laws to be governed by lawyers and judges who take away the responsibility for personal conduct and place it in the hands of the state, and many of our businesses have followed. The impact has been a loss in honor among business interactions that has not been desirable. Yet honor could be restored if only we stepped back into hindsight and dusted off the values that did emerge from dueling and upgraded that sentiment for our modern needs which starts in thinking like a gunfighter.

Rich Hoffman

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