And a lot of people are starting to think that it’s hopeless. My friends, it’s not hopeless. It’s dire!  But it’s not hopeless. It’s never hopeless.

You see, people have been here before. Not us, but other people. The great conceit of the modern age is that this is, in fact, a modern age. But it isn’t.

Let’s start at the top: with Barack Obama. Is he:

A. A Muslim-sympathizing, neo-Marxist true believer, who sees America and Capitalism as the principle barrier to fairness and world peace?

Or B, is he merely an empty suit, an unwitting pawn of much larger, hidden forces?

Or C,  simply a self-obsessed, incompetent narcissist who happened to be at the right place at the right time.

I’ve given this a lot of careful thought, and I think the real answer is yes.

He is a product of his time; a product of a civilization that has been dynamic and successful long enough for its prosperity to feel inevitable and indestructible. It’s not even really his fault. It has always been pretty clear from his record who he is and what he believes, and we elected him because the country was in the mood for a “progressive” president.

But Progressivism is not progressive – it’s ancient. Cyclical. It’s circular. It is, in fact, the symptom and the eventual cause of impending collapse.

In fact, in all of human history, there has been only one genuinely progressive, genuinely liberating idea: a lightning bolt across the pages of history – the why in 1776, the how in 1787 – the idea of limited government, god-given rights, personal liberty and rule by the vast collective wisdom and industry of the common man, and not by the bored, pampered and self-hating elites that have run everything before and since. This is a once-in-history idea. This is why we have to conserve it. We have to conserve this fundamentally liberal idea.

I said that what we today call Progressivism is in fact ancient and circular. Don’t believe me? Well, the great roman orator Cicero, speaking in defense of his friend Sestius, around 55 BC, said – quote:

“Gaius gracchus proposed a grain law. The people were delighted with it because it provided an abundance of food without work. The good men, however, fought against it because they thought the masses would be attracted away from hard work and toward idleness, and they saw the state treasury would be exhausted.”

When a society – after generations of hard work, sacrifice and hardship – reaches a certain level of prosperity, “Progressives” like Bill Maher, Janeane Garofolo, Rosie O’Donnell and Gaius Gracchus – that last Progressive died in 121 BC – assume that the prosperity is endless, and push for more and more people to get more and more goods and services for less and less work. Why? Because – as today, in America, as with the British Empire, the French Empire, the Spanish Empire, the Ottomans, the Mongols, Rome, Greece, Eqypt, Babylon… They do it for political power. They live for political power. This “Progressivism” is ancient, recurring, tyrannical and ruinous.

And we voted for it. Just like the Romans did.

We can see from Cicero that throughout history, the disease is always the same – too much security and prosperity breeds laziness, narcissism, resentment and entitlement.

So if this is the cycle of civilization, and we see these same recurring signs around us in abundance today – how can there be any hope?

There’s hope because we are Americans. We’re different. Not genetically – although we are in fact the world’s mutts and that is an enormous strength. No, we are different, unique and exceptional culturally – because unlike the Babylonians, the Eqyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Mongols, the Turks, the Spanish, the French, The British and all the rest – we have actually done it. We have created the political tools to limit power and reward hard work, and we have lived with them for almost a quarter millennia. It is only by restoring and strengthening these truly progressive, but now-called conservative ideals that we can break the cycle of history.

How?

Well, first, we have to know how we got into this mess in the first place.

This time around – our cycle – the rot began to take hold in America due primary to a group called The Frankfurt School. Keep in mind that the Frankfurt school is merely a product of where they appear on this great wheel of history – there have been dozens of civilizations that had their own “Frankfurt schools” in languages now lost to history.

But right after World War One, in Frankfurt, Germany the Institute for Social Research – they wanted to call themselves the “Institute for Marxism” but that was too on the nose – was left wondering why the world communist revolution — predicted as a certainty by Marxist social science – was not leading to the international revolution of the proletariat, the actual common working man.

And they figured out that capitalism – damn it! – was providing enough comfort and material gain, enough of an increase in the working man’s standard of living – that it just simply wasn’t going to happen. Ever.

Now, one kind of person might look at this and say, hooray! People’s lives are getting better – guess we weren’t needed after all.

But not these guys. These guys felt they had to bring heaven to earth.

And so they asked themselves: if the vanguard of the revolution wasn’t going to be the worker, then who would it be? And the answer they came up with was: the dispossessed.

The Neo-Marxist revolution would not attack the capitalist economy – that was too successful. The target of the new Marxist revolution would be the Culture.

Marxist philosophers like Antonia Gramsci, and later, Saul Alinski – personal hero to such present-day fellow travelers as Chris Matthews, Hillary Clinton and, of course, The President of the United States – started to create narratives – stories – about America. This rapidly evolved into a philosophy called “Critical Theory” and the idea of Critical Theory was to attack the dominant culture – that would be us – from all sides, simultaneously.

For instance, Black Americans would be told that their labor built the entire country, while White Americans merely sat back and essentially stole everything. Black slave labor did build the cotton economies of the Southern Confederacy, but the entire Confederacy had less factory capacity than New York City alone.

Nonetheless, many black Americans today have been taught that all of this belongs to them and not the truth, which is that that they were, and are, an integral and essential part of the group effort that built this country together.

Likewise, women are told that we live in an evil patriarchy, where all men are tyrants and potential rapists, determined to keep them in a form of domestic slavery, instead of being their partners and helpmates and husbands and protectors.

Gays are told not that this is one of the most inclusive and forgiving societies in the history of the world, but rather home to knuckle-dragging, murdering Neanderthals – when in plain sight, across the seas, one and a half billion Muslims routinely hang or stone or crush to death innocent people merely because of their sexual practices.

And on and on.

And when you try to argue against this social weapon of theirs, this Narrative, this lie that they tell again and again, well then, prepare for their counter-attack, which is called Political Correctness – the attempt to put the argument out of bounds before it can be had.

They use terms like Hate Speech and Racism. They want to put our arguments and rebuttals out of bounds so that they don’t have to hear them or deal with them. They have to exclude those arguments because if they don’t, those arguments are going to kick their asses and they know it.

And by the way: charges of Racism only work on decent people. You go up to a Klansman or a Nazi and call them a racist, and they say “duh!” Of course they’re racists. They’re proud of being racists. But you go up to someone who is not a racist, a person who finds racism appalling and disgusting, and tell them what they are saying is racism – even when it not only isn’t racism, but is in fact the opposite of racism– well, they’ll shut up. Mission Accomplished.

The objectives of the Frankfurt School, of Gramsci and Alinski in their assault on the culture, were laid out in detail and were very clear: Eliminate not only the voice, but the very idea of reason. Destroy history. Delegitimize shared morality. Medicate instead of discipline children. Promote the idea that problems are so complex that only elitists, experts and academics can discuss, let alone solve them. A later pair of American Marxist philosophers developed what became known as the Cloward-Piven strategy: overwhelm America’s social systems – welfare, health care, immigration, etc. by telling people they were owed things, and by intentionally overwhelming them, cause them to collapse – leaving nothing but smoking wreckage, and no where to turn but to the government.

But above all, for this Frankfurt school strategy to work, it needed to foster resentment, envy, hopelessness and despair.

And it’s been spectacularly successful.

My fellow Americans… we are in an information war, a battle of narratives, and if that analysis is true then you and I are the last best hope of the last best hope. We are, together, soldiers in this narrative war for America and for civilization.

So can we win?

Of course we can win!

Let me tell you where we are right now. We’re on the Titanic. Now hang on! There are some amazing things about that night that not many people know about. Things that give me hope.

Some people know that if the lookouts aboard Titanic had spotted the iceberg as little as five or six seconds earlier, Titanic would have been able miss that wall of ice by a few feet and would have survived to come home.

But very few people know that if those lookouts had spotted that iceberg only five or six seconds later — Titanic still would have survived. You see, Titanic was designed to remain afloat with up to five or her forward watertight compartments flooded – but not six. Had the lookout on Titanic seen that iceberg only a few seconds later, she would have hit it straight-on. It would have crumpled the bow, and a few hundred people would have been killed in the collision – but she would have stayed afloat, and instead of 1,490 people drowning in those icy waters, she would have limped home to New York, been refitted and repaired, and continued to do what she was built to do: bring people to America – to freedom. She represented what was best in us: vision, industry, ingenuity and hard work. That ship deserved to come home.

Some people misinterpret this to mean that there were a few seconds where Titanic could have been saved. It’s just the opposite. There were only a few seconds – ten or fifteen seconds – where Titanic could have been sunk. That iceberg went right down the side of the ship, staving in compartment after compartment. Progressivism is doing the same thing to our culture: flooding academia…movies…television…news media…comedy…music…government policy… damaging and flooding, one by one, the social institutions that kept this ship of freedom, ingenuity and prosperity afloat.

Like an iceberg, the danger from progressivism lies beneath the surface: the slow erosion of the work ethic, the fostering of division and resentment and unearned entitlement, the abandonment of the entire idea of decency and morality – all of this beneath the placid surface of simply claiming to help people.

My friends, it far too late to avoid this ancient iceberg, this giant dark wall that has sunk civilization after civilization under the calm disguise of compassion and concern. We cannot steer around it. If we are to avoid that fate, there is only one option left.

We need to ram the iceberg. We need to hit it head-on. We need to put in all the power we have – all of the power – and go right at the heart of that monster. Because everyone talks about what the iceberg did to Titanic, but no one talks about what Titanic did to the iceberg.

You see, I know something critical about this iceberg out in front of us, and that is this: that iceberg is hollow. It’s hollow.

Even the people who believe in it most strongly know it’s a lie. That’s why they have to lie to you about what they believe. They know, in their heart of hearts, that this philosophy has been the ruin of civilization in every one of the countless times it has been applied. They know – consciously or not – that in the last century alone their ideas have cost the lives of no less than 150 million people executed, or starved to death, to bring this paradise to earth.

And unlike the brave and selfless men and women that daily risk, and often give their lives in defense of freedom for their fellow man, these people believe in nothing greater than the sound of their own voice and are willing to die for nothing.

What would Bill Maher, or Janeane Garofolo, or Rosie O’Donnel be willing to give their own lives for?  Nothing. Nothing.

It’s hollow. That iceberg is hollow. And we need to ram it, and we need to ram it now. It’s going to crush the front of our ship, and severely damage us as a culture – but we will survive. And by surviving, we can repair the damage and make ourselves better than we were.

We, for the first time in human history, have an example of what a free society looks like. We, for the first time in history, are children of the only real progressives in all of human history. And we, for the first time in history, have the technology that allows common people to talk to each other, to encourage and inform each other, and to make an end run around the suicidal elites and their suicidal, dying media organs.

We can do it. And we’re gonna do it.  We are going to whip these communists out of their boots. And starting next time, we’ll start figuring out exactly how.

Let’s ask some reasonable men – because the Founding Fathers were surely the largest collection of reasonable men ever gathered in one place at one time in history – what they thought about the issues raised by the Tea Party movement.

For instance, what did they think of a powerful central government?

George Washington:

“Government is not reason; it is not eloquence. It is force. And force, like fire, is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.”

To those who say, well, the Government has to force you to buy something you don’t want. It’s for the greater good! Here’s William Pitt, 1783:

“Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is argument of tyrants. It is the creed of slaves.”

Thomas Jefferson, the most intellectually brilliant man to ever hold the office of President – Barack Obama excepted, of course – had this to say in his First Inaugural, accepting the reins of that power:

“A wise and frugal government – (wise and frugal, my God how we have fallen) A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government…”

Did the greatest mind in American history have any other radical, dangerous thoughts on the encroachment of government and uncontrolled spending?

Jefferson, 1782:

“On every unauthoritative exercise of power by the legislature must the people rise in rebellion or their silence be construed into a surrender of that power to them? If so, how many rebellions should we have had already?”

Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Taylor, May 28, 1816:

“The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.”

Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Spencer Roane, March 9, 1821:

“The multiplication of public offices, increase of expense beyond income, growth and entailment of a public debt, are indications soliciting the employment of the pruning knife.”

Thomas Jefferson, 1824:

“I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.”

1824! If Jefferson was outraged at the extent of the federal government in 1824, then that’s good enough for Bill Whittle in 2010. You see, unlike Chris Matthews and Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz and Keith Olbermann, I don’t think I’m smarter than Thomas Jefferson. But Ed and Rachel and Chris and Keith are here to tell you that protesting this government takeover of the auto industry, the financial industry, the insurance industry, the housing market and now the nation’s health care is a wild and radical idea!

I’ll tell you what else we Tea Party supporters believe in: we believe that the Constitution is Law. In the same way it’s the Ten Commandments and not the Ten Suggestions, we feel that the Constitution is law. When the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, was asked where she drew the Constitutional authority to force people to buy health insurance, she said this…

And, famously, a few days ago, Democratic Congressmen Phil Hare, from Barack Obama’s own state of Illinois, had this to say about the source of his legal authority to make people do things they don’t want to do…

Now, if you took your responsibilities and your oaths seriously, I would be forced to at least respect the offices you hold, Madam Speaker, and Congressman Hare. But it’s obvious you don’t. So listen carefully, Nancy and Phil, to what better people then you can even imagine being had to say about the source of your authority:

“If it be asked, What is the most sacred duty and the greatest source of our security in a Republic? The answer would be, An inviolable respect for the Constitution and Laws — the first growing out of the last…. A sacred respect for the constitutional law is the vital principle, the sustaining energy of a free government. “

Alexander Hamilton, Aug 28, 1794

“The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government.”

Patrick Henry

“A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.

Thomas Jefferson, 1774.

And finally, what about the dangerous, wild-eyed, hateful and threatening allusions to violence? What about that un-American, unheard of, unprecedented repudiation of the genteel nature of politics, as represented by the calm and rational rhetoric that came from the left during the Bush years? What did the founders have to say about defending freedom, by force if necessary?

One of the Framers of the Constitution, John Dickinson wrote:

“We are reduced to the alternative of choosing an unconditional submission to the tyranny of irritated ministers (“irritated ministers” – I love that; that’s spot-on) or resistance by force. Honour, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us.”

Or this, from Patrick Henry , 1778:

“Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined.”

Of all of the things I have seen since this movement began, nothing has tickled me the way blogger Kent McManigal has with his updated take on the famous Gadsen Flag, widely popular at the time of the Revolution and making a strong comeback in the Tea Party movement. Here’s Kent’s flag:

Time’s up, guys. I know you Irritated Ministers and the defenders of the rich and powerful in the news media loathe and despise the Tea Party because you fear it. And you are right to fear it! It’s coming! It’s coming to take the country back from you big-state, anti-freedom elitists. Time’s up.

Here are some final words to take us out.

Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 21, 1787:

“The natural cure for an ill-administration, in a popular or representative constitution, is a change of men.”

John Adams, 1765:

“Liberty must at all hazards be supported. We have a right to it, derived from our Maker. But if we had not, our fathers have earned and bought it for us, at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasure, and their blood.”

Benjamin Franklin, July 4, 1776:

“We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”

And then there’s this:

“What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

Thomas Jefferson in a letter to William Stephens Smith, 13 November 1787

And finally, from Samuel Adams – for all you big-state control freaks, Tea Party slanderers and the entire staff at MSNBC:

“If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.”

Those are the wild-eyed radicals I stand with, and those are the ideals that I hold that are under assault. What about you?

It’s been a tough week. Here’s a little something that might help in the meantime, while I get caught up…

At CPAC last month I had a chance to meet a lot of young people; really remarkable young people. College students mostly (and I don’t know what they’re putting in the water at Fordham University — Go Rams! — but for God’s sake, can we bottle it and put in the elementary school’s drinking water?)

College kids, a few high school kids… and two remarkable 14 year olds named Cole Campbell and Lyda Loudon. They have a website called THE FUTURE SPEAKS! and if you sometimes fear that the next generation is irretrievably lost, you should head over there and read their latest, which you can find here.

This may be the second or third link post in the seven year history of Eject! Eject! Eject! but you keep an eye on these kids. They are going places, mark my words.

I thought I might need to try my small part to cheer people up and calm them down, but for once I have underestimated the American people.  People, by and large, seem not only calm but absolutely determined. Everywhere I have looked this morning the reaction seems to be more or less the same: a nation of steely-eyed missile men. These Marxist bastards have no idea what is coming for them. No idea.

Laugh while you can, Monkey Boys.

What passed last night is a long way from the single-payer, socialist dream its supporters secretly — and not so secretly — really want. As a matter of fact, it’s hard to imagine a bill more perfectly constructed to tee off everyone: Conservatives hate it for it’s regulation, cost and explosive growth of government; liberals hate it because it forces people (so far, so good!) to buy premiums form the hated private insurance companies. (What the–!)

So, in terms of limiting the practical and immediate damage, holding it here — just holding it — is important and essential.  Barack Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi have an IQ of 130 — that would be combined between the three of them and you can get to 150 if you throw in Biden — and so they actually believe that a few months from now, they will be able to add single-payer to this goat rodeo, this bloodbath, this circus of incompetence conducted by this museum-grade confederacy of dunces. It got them a bill that requires people to pay for private insurance — which I am, of course, utterly opposed to on every level — but that is way short of single payer and we MUST hold the line here and not an inch further until reinforcements arrive in January. And they will. In numbers that will astonish and amaze the most optimistic among us.

We need to understand the great lesson we have learned about these people in this debate. Barack Obama is, to the liberal cause, a politician that comes not once in a decade, or once in a generation, or even once per century. Barack Obama is, to them, a once in history opportunity for progressives to control this country, and they will fall on a forest of swords to achieve those ends because this is the best chance they have ever had or ever will have to permanently shackle the people to the state. They know that this Health Care fiasco will cost them the House and now perhaps the Senate in November, but that new Congress will not seat until January and in the ten months between now and then they will, I predict, start an orgy of legislation that will make this Health Care circus look like a tea party.

But it seems to me that they have spent every dime of political capital in the bank and have done nothing less than awoken from its long and deep slumbers the American Giant, who in attempting to sit upright discovers the Lilliputian threads that have been staked into the ground with finishing nails and who looks around, blinking and disoriented, fatter and softer and much, much poorer than he was when he last opened his eyes back in 1941, but possessed now as then with a terrible anger and capable still of mighty exertions.

So, to the short term: everybody knows that Reid and Pelosi and The Lightworker himself, obviously, are all hoping to use this bill as the foot in the door for the stuff they really want:  a single-payer National Health System, or at least the “public option,” which is simply single-payer on the installment plan. We can’t let them get that. Going forward, we can’t let them get single-payer, or cap and trade, or amnesty, or any of it.

We can learn some lessons here. We have to. One lesson is message discipline. What is message discipline? I’ll give you an example:

What’s in a Big Mac?  Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun! That’s what’s in a Big Mac. We have got to understand that saying NO! to this socialism is admirable and essential, but that from now on there has to be a counter-narrative to what these Marxists are selling, because like it or not the human brain is wired for stories — that’s how we learn (and why the real fight is not for Washington but rather Hollywood — but that’s a story for another time.)

If we want to win on health care, or any other issue, we need to have an answer to what they are selling and that answer needs to be as simple and comprehensive as the Big Mac slogan.

Our position on health care?  Two tax incentives, health accounts, crossing state lines, tort reform, competition on an auto insurance bun. And if we don’t learn how to do this we will lose.

A final thought on this darkish day: much is said about the “inevitability” of these kinds of legislation, that once enacted they are impossible to repeal or roll back.

This kind of thinking is self-fulfilling defeatism and has to stop. ANY law enacted can be repealed. We repealed a constitutional amendment, for God’s sake. From now on we must change our message from one of limiting government growth and spending and regulation to one of reducing it.

It is true that no nation has in the past ever recovered from the cycle of entitlement, moral decay and aristocratic rot that we find ourselves in. But it is also true that no nation — not one in history — was established precisely in opposition to these cancers. It is also true that never before have common people — otherwise known as the Host Organism — had the means to speak directly to one another, as we are here. It is true that if there is to be an historical exemption to the Cycle of Civilization it is only here that it will occur, and it is also true that the concepts of Free Will and Destiny are antithetical to one another. One of them is true and the other is not. It is my belief that you can chose to abandon Free Will and chose to believe in destiny and historical inevitability, or you can take the risk to believe instead that there is a new world populated by optimists and dreamers, but dreamers with rifles as well as quills and parchment… People who have never surrendered and for whom the very idea of defeat and despair is anathema.

That’s a choice I make every day. What we see before us is the result of lost elections and redemption will come from winning elections. Mark these words, my friends: We are going to whip these Marxists out of their little commie boots!

So I thought I spend a segment that just dealt with Your Humble Hosts… just a few personal questions to let you get to know us a little better. You can find that trisected warmth here.

Next up: BEYOND THE BURNER… some thoughts on Harrison Ford and my encounter with Indiana Jones in the skies over Southern California.

Star Wars was set a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away – only it wasn’t. It was about a farm boy from Tatooine – who was really a farm boy from Iowa – who meets a Corellian pirate with a fast starship – who is really a high school jock with a hotrod – and together they set out to rescue a Princess from Alderaan – who, again, is really just some snooty girl from the big city.

And it was just great fun. That movie changed the world.

Then, four years later when I was at the University of Florida, I saw a movie called Raiders of the Lost Ark. It featured a daring, adventurous, brilliant American explorer named Indiana Jones who roamed the world stealing things in the name of science.

And it too was just great fun.

Now, if you’re looking for that spirit of adventure – that sense of freedom and euphoria with just enough of an element of danger to get the blood flowing, then you cannot do much better in the real world than flying a small airplane. It’s been my passion all of my life. So imagine my delight to discover that Harrison Ford — the actor who of course portrayed both Han Solo and Indiana Jones — he and I both share the same passion for the challenge and transcendental freedom that comes with being a pilot.

Now a few days ago, Mr. Ford was doing an interview and casually mentioned how deeply he loved the freedom of flight:

“Learning to fly was a work of art,” said Mr. Ford. “I’m so passionate about flying I often fly up the coast for a cheeseburger. Flying is like good music; it elevates the spirit and it’s an exhilarating freedom.”

Like good music, it elevates the spirit and it’s an exhilarating freedom. Exactly right.

But the days of elevated spirits and exhilarating freedoms are coming to an end here in America. Because Harrison Ford – the quintessential American actor playing the archtypical American rebel and adventurer, can no longer use his own money, his own time and his own freedom to hop in an airplane and fly up the coast for the proverbial hundred dollar hamburger. Not if Wendy Buckley has her way!

Dr. Buckley, proprietor of carbonfootprint.com, located in fine old Worting House on Church Lane in Basingstoke, Hampshire, United Kingdom, has publicly called Mr. Ford’s personally funded search for an elevated spirit and exhilarating freedom “unnecessary.”

She goes on to say that “Flying is a huge source of carbon emissions and making unnecessary journeys by plane can no longer be seen as responsible to our environment. Stars like Harrison Ford need to embrace the huge opportunity to lead by example in the battle against climate change – reduce their overall lifestyle carbon footprint and carbon offset those unavoidable emissions.”

Now Mr. Ford, you will be pleased and surprised to know that Dr. Wendy Buckley herself can help you in this regard because at her website you can in fact purchase absolution at the bargain rate of $25.61 per ton of carbon emitted. What a remarkably selfless and helpful woman.

Mr. Ford, I’d like to speak to you now not as a Hollywood celebrity and not even as a fellow pilot, but rather as the actor that was able to find within himself that exceedingly rare alchemy of rebellious charm mixed with fundamental decency and innocence. I’d like to speak to the person who has captured the American spirit in the characters of Han Solo and Indiana Jones in a way that has never been surpassed, and which brought you – deservedly – the resources to buy and fly your own airplanes and experience the exhilaration that you and I and very few others can actually comprehend.  

I am asking that man to do the right thing, to stand up and publicly invite Dr. Wendy Buckley of Worting House in Basingstoke, UK to share a moment of our pilot’s euphoria by taking a very long flying leap off of a very short pier. Mr. Ford, stand up and tell Wendy Buckley to Pound Sand!

From Dr. Jones to Dr. Buckley: just say, “This is none of your business! It’s a free country!”

Remember that little expression? “It’s a free country!” Remember when that was a common response to these petty tyrannies? Remember when any time anybody tried to tell you what you could and could not do we didn’t just whimper and apologize we used to turn to them and say, “Who died and made you king? This is a free country! I’ll do what I damn well please!”

Does this matter? Yes it does. Because freedom of action and personal responsibility are welded together, two sides of the same coin. When we are free to do as we please we become the kind of independent, self-reliant people who will step up in emergencies. And when we surrender our will to other people who live to tell us what to do, we then become dependent on being told what to do all the time.

My brother Steve is a year younger than me. Right around age 13 Stevie used to take a tent, his dog and a shotgun and hitchhike from our home in South Florida out into the Everglades. He’d usually be gone or two or three days. Did my mom worry about him? Yes she did, but on some level I guess she preferred to raise an independent boy who was living his life to the fullest rather than perpetually trying to defend a life-long infant.

A few months ago I heard in passing that Steve had been on his way to work one morning when he passed a car that was on fire with the driver still inside. He pulled over, grabbed his crowbar, smashed the window and with the help of another passing citizen pulled her out and saved her life. He never thought to mention this to me. I found out about it second hand a few days afterward.

Or parents raised all of us in the way that most American kids used to be raised: to be free and independent and capable of acting on our own initiative when the moment called for it. We rode in the back of pickup trucks and station wagons, we played on monkey bars and carousels and big old swing sets that we used to endlessly try to go all the way over on. We got hurt, and banged up, and we learned our lessons, and our survival rate did not seem to be significantly lower than the kids today, who, if they go outside at all, play non-competitive games on rubberized surfaces with anxious parents hovering a few inches away ready to catch them before they hit the ground.

How are these kids going to turn out? Well, a couple of months ago, I had to have my car towed from my parking garage. The man with the tow truck, named Eddie, pushed from the front while I pushed and steered from the side and after we got it on the truck he thanked me for the effort, to which I replied, “what am I going to do – just sit there and watch? Well, as it turns out, most men in Los Angeles do just sit there and watch. If it’s raining, these grown men will sit in the car while Eddie pushes – for a hundred yards down a slippery street. His number one call is to go out and change a tire: change a tire for grown men who just don’t know how.

So what does this have to do with Harrison Ford and Wendy Buckley? Well, Americans like Han Solo and Indiana Jones are free men. They are brave, resourceful and kind. And they take the initiative  – that’s what Americans used to know how to do in their bones. . They do not wait to be told what to do because they do not have to be told what to do. They know what to do.

Back in Dr. Buckley’s home, Great Britain, a little girl recently burned to death in her apartment as a result of what started as a smallish fire. A few brave men tried to enter the building to save her life, but they were forcibly prevented by the police – who not only did not go in to save her but in fact barred the way of the men who tried to.

When it was over, the police were congratulated by the police chief – a man no doubt after Wendy Buckley’s heart – who after all only wanted to prevent the additional loss of life that may have occurred should those men had attempted a rescue.

So the question is, ladies and gentlemen, which kind of world do you want to live in? A world where a little girl dies in a fire, along with perhaps two or three other heroic men who tried to save her? Or one in which that girl’s one chance at life, and a future, and children and grandchildren, was taken from her by policemen guarding her from individual action on behalf of the safety-minded nanny state… this horrific, faceless state identified only by the condescending smile of those acting out of the greater good… that cradle-to-grave, busy-body, do-gooderism that condemned that little girl to death and prevented by state force the free-will decision of those heroes who chose to risk their own lives to save another.

That kind of society is coming here. That ethos is growing daily here – in the last bastion of human freedom and initiative. Each year, fewer and fewer people – good-hearted people – will take the initiative to enter a burning house or car – or even change their own tires – because we allow people like Wendy Buckley to tell us what we can and cannot do with our own time, our own money and our own freedom.

If we surrender to these people, personal freedom and bravery – they are welded together – will wither and vanish, just as it did in the Soviet Union when this same sort of people finally got the power they live for. When Han Solo made the Kessel run in twelve parsecs, no doubt some bureaucrat was there to say that the Kessel Run should never be made in under 18 parsecs as it’s wasteful of fuel destructive to wormholes. Would Han Solo take that? Wasn’t the entire point of Star Wars the fight to make it a Free Galaxy? What the hell is the point of a Free Galaxy if you can’t do the Kessel Run in twelve parsecs when you feel like it? If you want to be a slave to the Imperial Bureaucracy, just come out and say so.

You’ll no doubt be pleased to know that the Heritage Foundation has, for the first time ever, has downgraded the United States of America from being a free country, economically, to being Mostly Free – in the same company as Chile, Bahrain, The Netherlands, Mauritius, Lithuania and Botswana.

(click to enlarge)

Oh, and culture lovers, just in case you can’t see the obvious: the reason the first three Star Wars movies were so terrific, and the second three sucked so bad, is actually very simple. The first three were about rebels, shooting guns and driving fast, and speaking with American accents. The second three were about politicians, discussing treaties and holding court, and speaking with British accents.   

It’s coming. But we can stop it. If we have the will, we can stop it. We can still do it, if we chose to: here in the land of the mostly free, and the home of the occasionally brave.

Is the Democratic strategy to chew and drag this awful health care fiasco over the line really to try to eliminate as many members of congress as possible in order to reduce the number of ‘yes’ votes needed? Rep. Massa says that is exactly what is happening.

Steve Green, Scott Ott and I try to respond. I say try, because this is passing the realm of what is possible to parody. Probable content warning for adolescent humor and appropriately inappropriate Tweets.  

You can watch it in all its juvenile glory here.

The link is here. Full text tomorrow, and on Wednesday, I’m going to start a small segment called “behind the ‘burner,” developing a few of the ideas a little further.

Hope you like it.

[I am going to start publishing the text of the Afterburner's sometime after they appear on PJTV (I tried to do it before they appeared once, and the text got the link and not the video!)