King raised $242,370. Not too shabby. Clearly, this is a commendable and gracious effort on the part of King. It says a lot about his character. But when you bring it into context with past King quotes and his overall liberalism, it brings up an interesting hypocrisy in what famous liberals and 1 percent types do and say.

In the past, King has stated that he thinks people who make as much as he does should be taxed as much as 50 percent. Why? Has King fully thought about a world where 50 percent of his money is taken by Big Government and then they decide where it goes? Just because it goes to the government with the “best intentions” does not mean it will help heat fellow Mainers’ homes. Yet liberal entertainers like King continue to beg Obama to tax them more when they are fully capable as individuals who have found financial success to use their disposable income anyway they see fit, including helping those they see as needy.

How Stephen King has not connected his actions with his beliefs is really quite amazing.

Has he imagined a world where the government taxed him less? Imagine how much more good he could do with that disposable income!? Or not. It’s really his choice. When giving becomes forced giving, then the whole act has lost merit. Why is it liberals cannot imagine a world where people with money make the right decisions? Why is it they oppose choice so often, yet turn around and exemplify choice with their own income?

King not only raised almost a quarter of a million dollars in the name of charity, but he also owns the very radio station through which the contest was held. Think about that. King, as a 1 percenter, is able to provide jobs not just through his writing but through his radio station. In the dystopian future where liberals want to take us, there is no such thing as men earning a living, becoming successful, starting businesses, providing jobs and giving back to those in need. In their world, there is a defined upper class that pays for the lower classes as they deem appropriate. The whole capitalist system becomes handicapped and people become trapped. King, himself a liberal, gives into this philosophy of taking in order to give when he is a perfect example, in some respects, of opposition to that liberal philosophy. He became successful at what he loves, then started a business that provides jobs and regularly gives back to those in need.

King is the most successful author in the world, and he shows no signs of slowing down. His new novel, “11/22/63,” has become a New York Times Bestseller, and he has a new miniseries, “Stephen King’s Bag of Bones,” on A&E. But this article is not meant to criticize the man’s art. His art is almost beyond criticism because of its wild success and popularity. This article is simply meant to point out the common sense of situations that so many liberals seem to miss. They applaud men like King when they talk about needing to be taxed more and then they applaud him again when he creates jobs and helps others with his disposable income. Yet they cannot put together the obvious points.

Men like King exemplify the best of capitalism. He found what makes him happy and then became financially successful doing it. Would he be able to do such philanthropic things if he made half what he makes now? How much more could be do with all the money he earns? With his money he provided a better life for himself, his family and others by creating jobs and donating. He did this all in a system of choice and American capitalism.

Why is this so hard for King and other liberals to see?

Whatever happened to live the change you want?

Newsbusters:

As FNC’s Geraldo Rivera appeared in New York City for his Geraldo at Large show on Sunday night to give attention to the Occupy Wall Street protests, participant and music mogul Russell Simmons sparred with FBN’s Charles Payne after Simmons complained that his taxes were too low and claimed that his employees pay more taxes then he does.

When Payne jumped in to suggest, “you could have written an extra check,” Simmons shot back: “Why am I gonna write a, that’s a dumb thing.”

Payne mocked Simmons’s refusal by cracking, “Because you feel patriotic.”

After Simmons indicated that he contributes money to charities instead of donating more taxes, Payne challenged the music mogul on a credit card business Simmons apparently earns money from, and whether such a business is what the protesters Simmons supports are complaining about. Payne:

But, listen, you have a credit card company, you have a credit card company, and you charge people interest to use those cards. Isn’t that what they’re railing about? It’s not a free card. How did you make $100 million?

Simmons again defended his refusal to voluntarily contribute more taxes:

The point I’m making is that I’m not knocking corporations. I’m knocking the game they’re playing. I’m not knocking the players, I’m knocking the game. And what I’m telling you is that this country allows too much access to their politicians by too much interests and too much money. It’s really simple. And I’m happy to pay more taxes, but I’m not going to pay more taxes alone. I’d rather give it to my charities.

Simmons only compounds his raging hypocrisy with the absurd claim we should excuse his refusal to raise his own taxes because of his charitable giving. Hey, what do you know, Russell thinks he can do a better job of helping those in need than the government.

Welcome to the club, Russell. But full membership requires an end to your lobbying to take money from the private sector necessary to create jobs and give it to the big, fat, bloated, incompetent and corrupt federal government.

Before you go to sleep, however, or bump up another article, stay with me and this article’s title.

The cited video is Michael Tilson Thomas’ exceptional and exceptionally moving tribute to the soul of Dimitri Shostakovich and the hidden meanings within his Fifth Symphony that has profound relevance to the direction we are headed into with the Progressive New World Order.

—–

The Tilson Thomas complete video is an intensely condensed portrait of Stalin’s Russia. I consider the Tilson Thomas lecture/documentary a “must-see” for anyone viewing America primarily through the eyes of Hollywood and the performing arts.

The Soviet Union ravenously fed on the terror we can find breathing beneath the Shostakovich Fifth Symphony. The nightmare is only there, however, and can only be perceived if we begin to understand the musical code with which Shostakovich is constructing an obligatory deception.

Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony is a lie?

How do you appease a terrorist, the homicidal Communist Joseph Stalin, while, at the same time being true to yourself and your calling as an artist?

With that challenge in mind, why would I ever come up with the title, Bringing America Home Again?

The history of Stalin’s Russia is vitally important as a measure of how far the Progressive New World Order has dragged America and Americans away from their original faith in individual freedom and individual responsibility.

The last four Presidents have steadily transformed a Democracy into a Progressive New World Order Oligarchy and from there into an increasingly centralized, world power not within Washington, D. C but woven and strengthened daily out of the United Nations. That international body’s increasingly bloated animosity toward the three thousand year old Judeo-Christian civilization, the culture out of which most of America’s fundamental values have evolved, is a matter of historical record.

However, President Obama is determined to question America’s self-image with his “fundamental transformation”:

We do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values.

–President Barack Obama

Quite frankly, we are being dragged by this imperial vision of a New World Order into the undeniably Marxist vision of man as a manageable herd as versus a humanity with Judeo-Christian faith in the sacredness of the individual human being.

I now feel obliged to remind my readers of the obvious: Karl Marx and his writings are a great deal closer to both Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong than they are to the Holy Bible. With President Obama as a self-admitted Marxist and an avowed “secularist” when it comes to defining the soul of America, the Holy Bible and the entire Judeo-Christian Civilization appear increasingly irrelevant to the Obama Nation of America.

I recently examined my old hometown of New York City and its recent 9/11 Memorial Ceremony.

Clergy had been summarily excluded by Mayor Bloomberg and President Obama from an American memorial ceremony?

Are clergy somehow un-American?

From the President’s words cited above, one might certainly think so.

Clergy are “un-Progressive”!

A devout Marxist believes that religious faith is an “opiate” that the human race must replace with increasing dependence upon the opiate of centralized government and the spin-doctoring of Michael Bloomberg and President Barack Obama.

Is the President of the United States to be the only major spiritual leader we can depend on for guidance? He seemed to be the only one to quote scripture or invoke God’s name at the ceremony.

Yet some Americans, like former Ambassador John Bolton, seem to think that President Obama has neither a clear nor consistent vision. In the former Ambassador’s eyes, the President is “naïve”. Though Obama is clearly the fourth, Presidential nail in the prophecy of George H. W. Bush’s New World Order, the Ambassador doesn’t see a connection.

Ambassador Bolton’s appears totally out of touch with George H. W. Bush’s Progressive New World Order and its innermost circles, including the increasingly suspect, New World Order efforts of John Bolton’s onetime boss, George Jr.

Does the White House regularly lie to its United Nations’ Ambassador?

Misinform him so often that he’s made a regular arm of mainstream misinformation?

Particularly at this moment in American history?

Ambassador Bolton claims that President Obama has no coherent plan or strategy that supports both his domestic and foreign policies.

Really?!

Wiping his own mind clean of even its own intelligence, John Bolton writes this breathtaking sentence about the Obama administration’s conduct:

“But it is folly to look for rhyme and reason

(in it)

when there is neither.”

The President’s belief that America has no specific religious tradition and his dismissal of clergy at the 9/11 Ceremony show a pattern of considerable rhyme and reason.

The Marxist/Islamic alliances, which Ambassador Bolton refuses to recognize within the Obama Nation’s “Progressive” strategies, reveal a clear and calculated connection between President Obama’s Arab Spring and his Marxist economic policies being thrust on the United States.

Beginning the second segment of Maestro Thomas’ exegesis of the Shostakovich Fifth Symphony are a few but powerfully familiar measures from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.

Beethoven, until the moment Napoleon Bonaparte declared himself an “Emperor”, had been a Bonapartiste, a devoted disciple of Napoleon’s dream of uniting Europe.

Shostakovich, particularly in his second and third symphonies, had shown himself a devoted child of the Communist Dream. When the Revolution began in 1917, Dimitri was only 11 years old.

How had Shostakovich put himself into such disgrace with the “authorities” that he feared for his life?

Stalin had attended a performance of the Shostakovich opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk.

The dictator leader of the Soviets had walked out of the theater after the first act.

Then a second and literally life-and-death evaluation of that opera appeared in the official Communist newspaper, Pravda. It was a scathing indictment of both Shostakovich and his music.

Many said and many still say that it was Joseph Stalin himself who wrote the condemnation.

The Message had been sent!

Shostakovich had been thrown into such terror that he sometimes waited on the stairs of his apartment building for the KGB to show up for him. He didn’t want his loved ones to see him taken away.

The composer had cancelled his own Fourth Symphony shortly before its premiere performance for fear that what he had written was exactly what Stalin had criticized about Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk.

This is when the export of Soviet propaganda and Stalin’s propagandists to the United States and the infiltration of the American performing arts began.

Stalin’s theory was: if you control a nation’s arts, you control the soul of that nation.

For the over eighty years that have passed since Stalin began his indoctrination of the Free World, the performing arts in America have been the main target of both Stalin’s policies and those of his still-devoted disciples.

Ever since then, the films and television series of Hollywood have been decidedly fed a Marxist and, in some cases, an actually Soviet bill of fare.

Tragically Hollywood has made the Far Left view of America its own perspective and the films arising from its studios and independent filmmakers mock, criticize and humiliate traditional American values.

No, America is not the Soviet Union yet and the Progressive New World Order isn’t undiluted Communism.

However, Barack Hussein Obama’s “fundamental transformation of the United States” and his Obama Nation has no other visible destination than a Marxist New World Order.

In my next segment of this series, Bringing America Back Home, I will be recalling our last and longest contact with a leader of the Soviet Union: Ronald Reagan’s efforts to come to some peaceful solutions with Mikhail Gorbachev. 

With the Shostakovich Fifth Symphony as our emotional guide, we can see with increasing depth the massively homicidal inevitabilities in an increasingly centralized governing system with worldwide ambitions. A creation such as the Progressive New World Order and its increasingly empowered, increasingly selective oligarchy.

What will be the fanfare to the Progressive and Increasingly Tyrannical New World Order?

The very riots predicted by Progressive Mayor, Michael Bloomberg of New York and actually promoted by the deliberately failing prescriptions of Bloomberg’s fellow provocateur, President Obama.

What is the “fundamental transformation of the United States”?

Martial law.

With that as the objective of the entire Obama Nation, everything Obama has done makes perfect sense.

Yet another hypocritical left-wing gazillionaire mouthing off about his desire to pay more in taxes…

Harvey Weinstein was on [Piers Morgan] last night, talking about his support for President Obama and the fund-raiser he held for him at his home last week. Weinstein echoed Warren Buffett’s call for the wealthy in the country to be taxed more — and said that he considers it an investment in the country, not an unfair burden.

We’re here to help you lead by example in two easy steps, Harvey:

1. Immediately stop with any deductions on your quarterly/annual taxes.

2. Go here and put your money where your child rapist-supporting mouth is.

You’re welcome.

The only thing stopping any of these fithy rich Leftists from paying more in taxes is their own selfish hypocrisy. In public they pose, in private they grasp.

None of them want to pay higher taxes. If they did — they would! 

But the reason they call for more taxes and environmental regulations is simple … and mercenary: Those who already hold political and financial power possess enough money and enjoy enough write-offs to weather anything the government might do. They also have enough influence with liberal DC corporatist like President Obama to ensure that’s always the case. The people who can’t survive these added burdens, however, are the up-and-comers — the potential competition. It’s Preston Tucker scenario all over again, where the best way to stay on top is to lobby in favor of the competition-killing taxes and regulations you can handle but entrepreneurs on the rise cannot.

Warren Buffet, General Electric, Harvey Weinstein and the like DON’T see burdensome taxes and regulations as  burdensome taxes and regulations. They see a friendly government as their partners in a ruthless and corrupt game of King of the Hill.

It’s the same with Hollywood’s phony posing over the phony Global Warming “crisis.” As they sit in big air-conditioned mansions, they demand the government tell the rest of us to live like Quakers. Anyone who truly believes the planet is in crisis lives as though the planet is in crisis, not like an Egyptian Pharaoh.

They are The Man and they want to keep the rest of us down in order to remain The Man.

Liars. Hypocrites. Phonies. Posers. Leftists. Period.

The absurdity of his proposal was the point: “For Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public as a part of the Martel-Harper Challenge.”

In Swift’s time, the average person in Ireland was poor and destitute, children were unwanted and a lot of pregnancies ended in barbaric abortions. Petty crime and thievery and moral decay was rampant due to the existing circumstances that forced children and adolescents to fend for themselves. The wealthy nobility languished over the sorry state of affairs, but only offered criticism and scorn for the savages instead of reform to help aid their condition.

[I]t is exactly at one year old that I propose to provide for [the mothers] in such a manner as instead of being a charge upon their parents or the parish, or wanting food and raiment for the rest of their lives, [the children] shall on the contrary contribute to the feeding, and partly to the clothing, of many thousands. … I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.

If you take the Hollywood theme to heart, Swift’s time and our own have converged. How many tear-jerking interviews over the years have we read or watched from liberal celebrities? They often like to repeat many profound statements such as, “The American dream is turning out to be and American nightmare.” They discuss with much candor the ills, greed, and selfish nature of American society. Meanwhile, many of the top celebrities are worth more than a $100 million. They live in gated communities; reside on vast compounds or islands far, far away from the society they speak so passionately about.

“And finally, I would say that, you know, we are a little bit out of touch in Hollywood every once in a while, I think. It’s probably a good thing. Uhm, we’re the ones who talk about AIDS when it was just being whispered. And we talked about civil rights when it wasn’t really popular. And we, uh, you know, we bring up subjects…we are the ones…this Academy, this group of people gave Hattie McDaniel an Oscar in 1939 when blacks were still sitting in the backs of theaters. I’m proud to be a part of this Academy. I’m proud to be part of this community. I’m proud to be out of touch. And I thank you so much for this” (George Clooney’s Smug Speech).

So why not eat Hollywood, then? Not literally of course. Besides, I don’t think they would make a tasty or even a healthy meal. All of those toxins, fake hair, and silicone implants would inevitably lead to a major recall. The FDA would go crazy. Instead, why don’t we hold their face up to the mirror just as Swift did to the British?

Glenn Reynolds offers a very modest proposal that would do just that. “Why the GOP should give Obama the higher taxes he wants”

Were I a Republican senator or representative, I would be agitating to repeal the “Eisenhower tax cut” on the movie industry and restore the excise tax. I think I would also look at imposing similar taxes on sales of DVDs, pay-per-view movies, CDs, downloadable music, and related products.

I’d also look at the tax and accounting treatment of these industries to see if they were taking advantage of any special “loopholes” that could be closed as a means of reducing “tax expenditures.” (Answer: Yes, they are.)

America, after all, is facing the largest national debt in relation to GDP that it has faced since the end of World War II, so a return to the measures deemed necessary then is surely justifiable now.

The president’s own rhetoric about revenues certainly suggests so. Perhaps the bill could be named the “Greatest Generation Tax Fairness Act” in recognition of its history.

Should legislation of this sort be passed — or even credibly threatened — I think we can expect to see Hollywood rediscover the dangers posed by “job killing tax increases,” just as pro-tax-increase Warren Buffet changed his tune once his own corporate-jet business was threatened.

And, given the entertainment industries’ role as the Democrats’ campaign finance ATM, it seems likely that the president might soon reconsider his rhetoric as well.

—–

Man oh man, Jon Stewart has the left-wing spin and talking points down cold, doesn’t he? No one with even a smidgen of intellectual honesty uses the term “revenues increases,” and to blame the Bush tax cuts (or any tax cuts) on the deficit — especially after Obama’s unprecedented spending orgy — is nothing more than pure propaganda.

Do Tea Partiers want government gone? No.

Do Tea Partiers want to pay zero dollars in taxes? No.

But if you got your news from Jon Stewart, you wouldn’t know that. And God help us all, people do get their news from Jon Stewart.

“Revenue increases?” It’s called a “tax increase.” And if your ideology is so pure, Mr. ClownNoseOffAndOn, and so right and so popular, why are you afraid to say “tax increase”? Why are you afraid to say, “We must take money away from private citizens and out of the private economy in order to give it to the government to spend”?

I thought so.

My hometown of Traverse City, Michigan has also been home to the Traverse City Film Festival (TCFF) since Michael Moore established it in 2005. When Moore announced this new venture, some were excited, some were wary, and many were eager to see exactly what he would do. He assured the public that the festival was just about bringing great films to Traverse City (along with seminars, panels, and other opportunities) and that it would be completely non-partisan. For the first five years, he did a great job.

There were those (myself included) who weren’t crazy about our town being associated with Michael Moore, but it was hard to deny the good that the TCFF was great for us in many ways. The historic State Theatre downtown was donated to the TCFF and restored to its former glory, and the event brought in a nice influx of tourist dollars. For a resort town, that is always welcome.

After five successful film festivals, with few partisan slips, Moore has decided to switch things up.  This year, he is openly bringing progressive rhetoric to the forefront. In an interview with local website The Ticker, he told the public what to expect from the 2011 TCFF. When asked what the biggest news would be from this year’s festival, his response was:

We’ll be doing a major salute to labor, working people, and unions. This year marks the 75th anniversary of the ‘Great Flint Sit-Down,’ a labor event that really helped create the middle class in this country. We’ll have a number of films and events surrounding this that deal with class, labor and working people. And, we’ll honor through the arts those people who are public employees and thank them for all they do.

 A salute to labor. Hooray! I had never heard of the “Great Flint Sit-Down,” but it doesn’t sound like a very tough stance (if you’ll pardon the wordplay) to take. However, this was the action which turned the United Automobile Workers (UAW) into the major labor union that we see today, by going after General Motors in Flint.

This sounds like a cause tailor made for Moore. After Roger & Me, we all know how he feels about GM. My question, though, is this: Why wouldn’t you celebrate the event in, you know, Flint? There are plenty of union members still working in Flint, and I feel confident that Moore can find some that he feels are being mistreated. Instead, he’s making it part of his Traverse City Film Festival. Is that to bring added attention (the press is already here), or simply because he lives here? No, dear reader, he does not live in Flint.

However, does it really matter where he salutes labor, as long as he does so? As long as he does his part to help the working man? This is where the bells of hypocritical awareness clanged in my head, for he does not do his part to help the working man.

The hub of the TCFF is The State Theatre. I love the State Theatre. It plays great films year-round, including 25 cent matinees of old movies, and It’s a Wonderful Life (among others) every Christmas. I have many many happy memories at The State. My dog loves the State Theatre. Every day on his walk downtown, he waits impatiently in line at the box office and is rewarded with a treat at the ticket window. Here’s the problem with these delightful scenes of small-town bliss: many of the State Theatre’s workers are unpaid. As it says on their website “great volunteers make the year-round operation of the State Theatre possible. As a volunteer-based, charitable non-profit organization, we depend on the generosity of our volunteers.” Pardon me? Surely such a paragon of workers’ rights wouldn’t ask people to work for free. Shouldn’t they be paid well above minimum wage and have solid gold healthcare?

It’s not his political beliefs that I find so distasteful (well, yes, that too), but the hypocrisy of it all. Why classify the State Theatre as a 501(c)3, which allows for tax breaks? Moore votes for and vocally supports programs that mean higher taxes, so I’d like to invite him to join me in paying them. It would even create a few jobs along the way. After all, he is a wealthy man, and wealthy men should be forced to share. Isn’t that his vision for the American dream? At least, that’s what he keeps telling us. Too bad actions speak louder than words.

The Traverse City Film Festival takes place August 26-31 2011

The top finishers in the Power Line Prize competition are being posted around the web. Number seven, called “Fiscal Child Abuse,” is a video submitted by the Independence Institute in Colorado. It features three young girls who want to start a lawsuit; it is funny, and is one of my favorites in the competition. Roger Simon of Pajamas Media has posted the video. …

Number five was submitted by the Young Cons, two rappers (and basketball players) from Dartmouth. Their video features lots of quick cuts as they interview students and a soldier. The cons themselves take the stage at the end. It is an impressive piece of work that rivets your attention even though it was one of the longer videos in the competition.

And here is number five:

—–

Visit our friends at Power Line for links to more runner ups and the upcoming announcement of the $100k grand prize winner.

For one, every President seems to really like it.

Case in point – Bush wanted it raised too.

But do you know who was against it then? Obama.

Because, he wasn’t President yet.

Now he is.

Suddenly raising the debt ceiling is paramount.

So to me, the President is like your wife, and the debt ceiling is a credit card. You can’t blame her for loving it.

But it’s time to cut that card in half. We need to say, “Honey, I love you – but hand it over. We’ll live.”

The point is, raising the debt ceiling is easy, because it’s easy!

In the past five years I put on the weight of your average sized child, because I kept raising my “weight ceiling.”

I didn’t die or anything, although over time, my wife found me repulsive.

Still does, actually.

See, no one just wakes up weighing a thousand pounds – they become morbidly obese incrementally.

The same way we end up with a morbid government – it expands imperceptively into a bloated monstrosity that smells bad and embarrasses you in public.

And speaking of money – isn’t it time we find someone who can explain how spending will help you out of a “spending crisis?”

I don’t sober up by drinking more, do I?

Well, maybe I do.

Anyway, you can’t spend your way out of spending crisis and you can’t tax people to make them prosperous.

But if Democrats believe government spending is the answer – - why not do it with tax cuts?

Aren’t tax cuts like government spending – except we’re the ones doing the spending. The government is just handing the cash over to smarter people like you and me.

Lord knows we’ll make better decisions on what to do with our cash. I have my eye on four houseboys. I need new bed posts.

And if you disagree with me, you’re a racist homophobe.

Tonight we’ve got:

John Gibson

Paul Mecurio

Jessica Coen

“Kate, California is going down! Pack up the kids now!

It’s not just California. It’s the whole goddamned world that gone to shit.” (John Cusack, 2012)

It’s surprising to me how often it seems like Sacramento wrote the plot of its own disaster movie and is now acting the part it has written for itself of panicking, incompetent government.

John Nolte, editor of Big Hollywood, has joined that great mass of reverse Joads (of Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath), in search of a better life anywhere but California. I imagine him, with his affects, trucking across the Mojave Desert in search of the better life that eluded him in California.

“The Mojave is a big desert and a frightening one. It’s as though nature tested a man for endurance and constancy to prove whether he was good enough to get to California,” Steinbeck wrote in Travels with Charley in Search of America. Now the desert, notwithstanding the government-induced drought in the Central Valley, is more metaphorical and all around us. There are no jobs but government jobs or the jobs the government has yet to destroy.

“You know what’s remarkable? Is how much England looks in no way like Southern California,” Austin Powers once said. But he was wrong. We are England, circa 1970. We’re still looking for our Thatcher. We hope if New Jersey can get Christie, maybe this state can come back, even if our last Republican governor merely played the part of a conservative. Indeed, the fattest governor in America could have taught the body builder a thing or two about trimming the fat.

Call me silly or foolhardy, but I’m not yet ready to leave the party. To be sure, the state’s fiscal matters are a mess and now it’s at war with Amazon.com in its vain hope to tax the Internet, its political class wants to kill off both its tax base and the middle class. If they could figure out a way to tax the weather, they would. (Oh wait, that’s what the global warming law – AB 32 – is all about!)

You see, I’m a refugee from Massachusetts, so I’m used to getting taxed and taxed hard. In California, at least I have the weather, the beaches, and the babes. The Beach Boys¸ let me tell you, really were right.

So about four years ago I showed up with no job, $40 dollars in debt, without having ever visited L.A., let alone my college (which I picked after spending the afternoon trying to find the college the furthest away from the Ivy League cliques). In Southern California, all you need is money, good looks, or grit. People spend less time asking you where you went to school and more time asking you where you want to go and how they can help. With its shallowness, it’s oddly more meritocratic than the supposedly deep political class that runs the country. With its love of beauty and the good life, it is fairer than the petty, soulless liberal prep school I went to.

Though I had no way to pay my bills, I was determined to make a go of it. Besides, I figured that if things didn’t work out, there were worse places to be homeless. Despite scholarships I still was so broke that I did odd jobs on Craigslist – the least pleasant of which was pulling a dad cat from underneath a house – and worked three different jobs, sometimes competing with illegal immigrants for the cash jobs I wanted. I still couldn’t afford the plane ticket back to Boston and saw my parents only a handful of times.  Times, as they say, were hard.

But in the evenings, I saved up enough money to take myself and my then-girlfriend, now-fiancée (remember what I said about California girls – she’s a sensible Berkeley grad) to the movies. And there we escaped together.

I had always thought she and I would leave the state altogether, but a recent movie finally convinced me to stay, Battle: Los Angeles.  Its critics to the contrary, the film delivered exactly what it promised: a battle in Los Angeles. Having spent way too many misspent hours on the freeways, the prospect that those freeways were to be destroyed was reason enough to make the trek to the theatre.

The plot was simple enough: genocidal aliens roamed about murdering people indiscriminately and then the Marines showed up to fight them off. In a situation room, the Sgt. Major put the situation darkly and grimly: “This is a textbook military invasion. We are the last offensive force on the west coast. We cannot lose Los Angeles.”

Something stirred in me hearing those words. Yes, we cannot lose Los Angeles. We cannot lose California.  We’ve got to get back to the fight.

No matter where we run, the Left will eventually come for us. Even liberals flee failure, though of course, they import it with them. Just ask Republicans in Colorado or New Hampshire, which are now swing states. Though many of us might move to the Texas – the land of the Alamo – California must be our battleground. It must be our Alamo.  After a brief stint in New York City at the Wall Street Journal editorial page, I’m going to come back to fight.

And yes, it’s true that California, once among the world’s greatest economies, would be under I.M.F. receivership were it independent, its worth it to get its financial house in order.

We need not be fatalistic about it, for as Shakespeare once said, the entire world’s a stage, we are merely actors, waiting for our entrances and exits.

Well, now is our cue.