Trading Up

“Metal doesn’t care what you look like” – Chloe Hudson. Don’t blink. You just might miss my cameo in this awesome documentary from #PragerU called “Trading Up." Plus, I get to open up for the great mikeroweWORKS. https://bit.ly/3FM6MCs #TheMikeRoweWorkFoundation #JoeGibbsRacing #PowerTechnicalSchool #TheRichDadCompany #tradesmen #dirtyjobs Thanks to Justin Folk for the fun opportunity.

Help Wanted

“Hey Brad. Do you know any good people who want to work?” I laughed, and said “Yes, but I’m already working.” My friend, a retail florist, is desperate to find a good employee who is self-motivated and competent, and she is willing to pay over market price for their time and talent. Yet, she has no takers and therefore she has had to stop taking wedding business because her everyday business would suffer. Finding people to fill positions in the workforce today is a task that often makes the cleaning of the Augean Stables look easy. Weekly I receive calls or have conversations with a customer, supplier, wholesaler, retailer, and networking groups all asking for help in finding qualified people to fill their empty positions. I have listened to many of the reasons given why so few people are applying for work. The government handouts are making it easy to stay home, the fear of catching the Wuhan virus, or not wanting to do a certain type of work. Yet that does not solve the issue of finding qualified workers for employers. What’s a business owner to do? I posed the question to my Mastermind group, a group of like-minded entrepreneurs who study and practice the science of success. Sure enough, golden nuggets of wisdom came pouring out. Here are some ideas that were discussed. First, we agreed that good employees often attract other good employees; the “birds of a feather flock together” idea. Good workers undoubtedly know others in their sphere of influence that might be attracted to working in a similar environment. Working for companies whose management values and rewards pride in work and recognizes employees for their accomplishments often attract employees more so than money. Do not underestimate the power of hiring happy people. I once had an acquaintance many years ago ask me about finding an employee prior to the “Dotcom Burst”. She told me the people she would hire had the right skills, yet they had a bad or negative disposition and would cause work-place issues or would quit once they were trained. My suggestion to her was to “hire happy”. In other words, hire someone who is enthusiastic, friendly, and is pleasant to be around for your internal and external customers. You can teach skills, you can’t teach happy. The “bad apple in a barrel” idea. Good employees welcome the opportunity to talk and even brag about their jobs if they enjoy the work and feel a sense of pride in what they do. Asking permission to record a testimonial on the value of their work and what they like about their business is a good way to get employees to sing a business’ praises and attract others. Testimonials work to attract customers; they will work attracting new hires as well. If an employee is camera shy, suggest a written or recorded testimonial. Post these stories on your company’s social media sites. Micro-target these brag-boasts via e-mail or text to prospective hires. And on the topic of social media, make sure you have a presence on LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube, at the very least. If you are not doing so currently, hire an intern or a young person looking for experience so you both win. If you are not online in today’s marketplace, you do not exist. Prospects are in the habit of interviewing companies just as much as companies are in interviewing prospective employees. Many workers today are looking for the flexibility of working remotely, especially in sales and if a company is not willing to entertain this, they may be overlooked. Treat prospective employees as an entrepreneur so their talents and special skills are considered as part of the hiring process. Offering current employees some sort of compensation, such as a finder’s fee or giving additional time off, are ways to incentivize. “Tell-a-Friend” programs can encourage employees to suggest prospects for their employer. Of course, there are the traditional channels of job placement sites, head-hunters, and social media placements, all of which produce various results. One of the best suggestions I have heard is to constantly be recruiting people who have a great disposition and are service focused so when you have a position available there is a reservoir of names you can pull from. I have a friend who dined out frequently in local restaurants. The friendly servers and the good food would keep him coming back, but a by-product was that he also got to know who these people were and how they approached their customers. One of his employees retired. Without missing a beat, my friend hired one of the restaurant servers because he knew they were service oriented and had a good demeanor. This person went on to be one of his best salespeople. As a Toastmaster I have learned that public speaking also has a component of public listening. The biggest opportunity in hiring today seems to be more listening and less talking about your company. Asking questions like, “What questions do you have for us?” invites the self-motivated and the curious. “What question should we have asked you?” gets the prospective employee to think on their feet and answer in terms of what is important to them. Finding a good match for employees and employers today is certainly different from when I started in business 40 years ago, yet something is constant. The relationship. Finding a way to close the gap between what you have to offer as an employer and how the prospective employee perceives your business is perhaps the biggest challenge to today’s businesses. The story is told of a stable needing cleaning filled with the usual stable substance. A young boy is put to work by a rancher to clean up the stables. The boy enthusiastically takes the shovel and heaves the muck into a wheel barrel. The rancher is amazed and asked the boy why all the enthusiasm? The boy smiles and says, “there must be a pony in there somewhere”. Look for happy employees who are not afraid to pick up a shovel. https://kimmonson.com/featured_articles/help-wanted/

Comply, I don’t think so!

In elementary school, I was told to color between the lines. I often did not. I creatively expressed myself outside the lines until I was instructed to conform to the image on the page. If I had continued down that creative path, I may have become a great artist celebrated for my unique style and bold strokes outside the ordinary, outside the lines. Yet, I did conform because a teacher insisted on it.

I was told to share my toys when playing with others and conform to the social norm of keeping harmony. I would think to myself, “but they are my toys.” Why do I need to share my possessions to please someone else just because they desire it? I was forced to conform and give up my possessions because someone else thought I should do so.

In a civil society we are told we need to conform to get along; to make things function in an orderly way. Often, we are told we must do for others first. We are coerced through peer pressure, or family or government to do something because others want us to or mandate us to or force us to. I fundamentally reject this assertation of conformity by coercion.

It may be nice and considerate to think of others first, such as when opening a door for someone if I get to it first. Or, letting someone go ahead of me in a check-out line if they have only one item and I have a cart full of stuff. That is just a common courtesy and I do it often. I like to do things voluntarily when an opportunity arises or to invest in others because it makes me feel better as an individual to share when I want to, not when some authority figure demands I do so.

I voluntarily receive a flu shot every year, even this past year. I did this to lessen the chance of catching a virus since I would normally travel for business several times every month, working trade shows, attending board meetings, and making sales calls. I was perhaps being optimistic that I would travel again sooner than later. The flu, the common cold, and many other illnesses did not disappear when the Wuhan virus appeared. There is still a chance of catching one of these common illnesses even with a once-a-year vaccination.

The Wuhan pandemic changed everything through fear, uncertainty, concern for one’s own safety, and the safety of those we care about. At first, through an abundance of caution, we voluntarily isolated ourselves with our immediate families or individual situations for two weeks to “flatten the curve.”  Then, we were told by experts to wear a mask to help slow the spread of the virus. Then, we were told do not wear a mask, then wear a mask, then social distance, (no thanks, I physical distance, yet stay socially engaged), wash your hands for twenty seconds, then put on lotion to keep your hands from falling off, then wipe down every surface, then, sanitize everything, etc., etc., etc…

I am through complying with commands from so-called experts. Their opinions are just that, opinions. Their educated guesses can be considered; however, their perspective should not be mandated into law. We are better served as a nation to have a debate, discussion, and then legislation if needed. Even if it saves one life it is not a reason to force others to do something against their will. I am more concerned about living my life fruitfully and without fear, than cower in the world of, “what if.”

Many people I know, especially older family members and friends are getting the COVID-19 vaccine, which in reality has not been approved by the FDA and is still an experimental drug. That’s great for them. It has given them a sense of relief that they can start to resume their lives again. I was on the fence weather I should get the experimental drug myself. Then, that old feeling of when I was a kid and being told I must do this for the good of others reared its’ head. I have done my research. I am being badgered by my doctor, family, and friends to get the experimental drug. The more people push me to conform, the less I want it.

Celebrities, politicians, friends, and family show themselves receiving their shots, or show their experimental drug cards on social media as if to state, I conformed, I am considerate, I am doing what must be done to get back to normal. Others, have a badge around their social media picture, extolling their perceived virtue.  Yet? Is this the path to normal? Conforming to what others insist you do? Isn’t this conformity a new way of shaming those who do not comply? Now, the government wants to add their weight to the scale. Are “vaccine passports” far off?

Recently, Jen Psaki, President Biden’s Press Secretary, answered the rumors that the Biden administration was developing a vaccine passport. “We are going to provide guidance, just as we have through the CDC. There’s currently an interagency process that is looking at many of the questions around vaccine verification, and that issue will touch many agencies as verification becomes an issue that will potentially touch many sectors of society.” Psaki continues, “A determination or development of a vaccine passport or whatever you want to call it will be driven by the private sector. Ours will more be focused on guidelines that can be used as a basis.” Psaki’s statement reminds me of a former president’s phrase “if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.”

It is only a matter of time before politicians, bureaucrats and interested parties will be requiring private business to follow their public rules which will include showing your “papers” or an app with the appropriate social rating score to enter a public library, a concert, or a sporting event. The technology exists to digitally follow your every move and make you comply with the people in power. This social stigma is now enforced with mask mandates which, in my research, do more harm than good. There are experts on all sides for and against this argument. So too with vaccines.

A risk calculator from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention last updated February 21, 2021, notes my risk of catching the Wuhan Virus is high for my age group, 36 in 1000 https://www.omnicalculator.com/health/covid-mortality-risk. Putting this into perspective, your risk of your home catching fire is 1 in 219. The risk of a serious car accident is 1 in 18. The risk of becoming disabled on the job is 1 in 14. Even at these high-risk levels, I will take my chances. Living is a risk.

The incremental usurpation of our individual liberties continues to erode day by day. Getting a vaccine should be a person’s free and informed choice. If a private business wants to mandate mask-wearing, they should have the choice to do so. If a private business wants to offer mask-less service, they should have the choice to do so as well. Then customers can decide where they want to do business. That’s the beauty of a free exchange society. Trading value for value. When politicians, bureaucrats and interested parties use coercion and threats of revocation of business licenses under the guise of businesses mandating behavior, that is not the free market at work.

My research notes the vaccine offers a false sense of security and is just another power play by those in control. If individuals choose to get the experiential drug, that is their personal decision. However, there are many like me that are not sold on the ability of this experiential drug to eradicate the virus. If this experimental drug is as safe as so many medical experts opine, why not open up the opportunity to try other experimental drugs for cancer treatments or other medical conditions?

I prefer to wait it out until all those who want to take the experimental drug, can get it.  I think I will mull it over for a year or two and then consider it or perhaps by then we will be at herd immunity. But, as of today, I will not comply.

There are many who will try to “vaccshame” me into getting the vaccine. Like anything else in our current identity-driven, false systemic racism, and overly woke world, I may be chided because I choose not to go along to get along. #stopvaccshaming #mybodymychoice #Iwillnotcomply

Listen to my interview at; https://kimmonson.com/kim_monson_show/humor-and-enjoyment-of-life/

Catching Leprechauns

People love celebrating holidays and special occasions. On Independence Day I often dress up as Uncle Sam and recite the Declaration of Independence. On Halloween, I build a Haunted House to spook the kids in my neighborhood and give them a chilling experience dressed as some monster or ghoul. On St. Patrick’s Day, I wear green, listen to traditional Irish music, eat corned beef and cabbage and raise a glass of Guinness to the Saint’s honor. St. Patrick’s Day is special to me, for it is also my birthday. I have always felt a kinship to the Irish people because of this. I love their history, literature, sense of humor, and their myths.

The leprechaun in Irish folklore is intriguing with their short stature and mischievous merriment, hiding their pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. The real gold is sharing the celebration of our unique cultural heritage. Celebrating other people’s special holidays, backgrounds, and experiences is one of the joys of life.

Yet, today in some hyper-sensitive enclaves, especially on college and university campuses, you can only celebrate from afar. Cinco de Mayo is observed on May 5th to commemorate the Mexican Army's victory over the French Empire at the Battle of Puebla. If celebrated by wearing a Mexican sombrero, poncho, and throwing back some Coronas with chips and salsa watch out. Someone is likely to shout, that’s cultural appropriation, especially if you are not Hispanic. Juneteenth is known as Freedom Day, a holiday celebrating the emancipation of those who had been enslaved in the United States. If celebrated with a barbecue and some soulful Blues, watch out. That’s cultural appropriation, especially if you are not black. Really!!! Who the heck gets to decide what’s cultural appropriation and what is not?

My step-daughter joined her Mom and me for our Passover Seder, which marks the Exodus of the Children of Israel from Egyptian slavery when God “passed over” the houses of the Israelites during the last of the ten plagues. My wife, who is Presbyterian, can cook up traditional Jewish foods better than members of my family. After eating a steaming bowl of “Jewish penicillin,” Matzo Ball Soup, my daughter exclaimed, “I love being Jewish. The food is awesome.” We all laughed. Isn’t this what celebrating other cultures and heritages is all about? Enjoying our similarities while discussing our differences in a civil and understanding way.

Having grown up in the sixties and seventies, I have experienced the shift from reasoned discussion to radical indoctrination in places of work, worship, and learning at all levels. Some elite college professors and special interest student groups, who are in fact the biggest dividers, are the most ignorant among us. Too often this cult of the unenlightened twist, turn, and misinterpret history and ideas to fit a narrative. Acknowledging other people’s cultures and heritage creates the wonderful melting pot of experiences we, as Americans, get to celebrate. The idea of E Pluribus Unum – Latin for “Out of many, one” should be held in such high esteem that it is etched on the hearts of all Americans.

Sadly, the dividers of the left continue to group individuals into color, race, religion, sexual orientation, and class. It is long past the time to stand against this tearing down of Western Civilization and say, “enough.” If you have a problem with my celebrating your holiday or heritage, that’s on you. I am fortunate to have friends of every race, religion, and background.  We often agree to disagree, and that is alright because as friends we are free to have differing opinions without being canceled or called out for an idea that is diverse.

I attended a Catholic University and loved the experience because it was the right school for me to attend. There I learned the quote from Saint Francis of Assisi who lived in the 1200s.  “First seek to understand, then be understood”. Or better yet, understand yourself then you might be able to understand others, celebrate others, enjoy their rich diversity of customs, cuisine, and traditions. Most importantly understand their wisdom.

It is time we push back on those who will not accept that we are all created equal as humans; that no one is more human than another. We are all equal under the law and should be treated with dignity and respected as individuals, not groups. The equity crowd that believes the myth of lighter-colored skin pigmentation equates to privilege needs to have their lies exposed and extinguished.

Leftists are always looking for power and pots of gold in other people’s pockets, creating their own mythical leprechauns to taunt us and telling impressionable young minds that there are elusive dragons to slay. In the battle of ideas, it’s time to stand up and say enough of this on the good Saint’s Day. Lift a glass of your favorite beverage and give a toast to the exterminator of snakes from the land. Sláinte!

https://kimmonson.com/featured_articles/catching-leprechauns/

Radio Interview. My portion of the show begins at 32:00

https://kimmonson.com/kim_monson_show/catching-leprechauns/

The Blessing of 2020 and the Promise of 2021 and Beyond

Kintsugi (pronounced kin = meaning “golden” + tsugi = meaning “joinery or repair”), is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the broken areas with lacquer dust mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum. The why behind this concept states that breakage and repair are part of the rich history of any object. It also is an act of embracing the flawed or the imperfect. Perhaps this is the perfect metaphor for 2020.

For many 2020 will be remembered as the lost year. The year we lost our job. The year we lost a family member, a friend, or a co-worker to the Wuhan virus. The year we lost our freedom. However, human beings are resilient creatures and can repair themselves as is done in the art of Kintsugi embellished with those scars which become part of our unique lives.

One of my mentors, the writer, and business expert, Jeffrey Gitomer once said, “Resilience is not what happens to you. It’s how you react to, respond to, and recover from what happens to you”. The precious elements used in rejoining the pieces of our lives making us whole again maybe those things that are certain in life.

You can achieve certainty by focusing first on yourself. Take the time to learn something new and build on your strengths. Again, as Gitomer says, “To read, to write, to prepare, in order to think and create.”  Have the faith in yourself that you can accomplish something.

Next, you can embrace the time together with family and friends. Or help and support those who are in need of your assistance. There is awesome power in giving of yourself voluntarily to assist someone. It is a gift given, not something taken. These are the adhesives of our existence, binding our imperfections and flaws into a celebration of life.

2020 illuminated how dependent we are on those who bring us together. The producer who makes the goods or grows the crops we consume. The driver who transports those goods to market and delivers them safely. The energy worker converts the natural, raw materials and turns them into useful entities to move those goods, or heat and cool our homes and businesses. The small business owners who invest in their community, employ local people and provide the framework of our economy. The innovators and improvers who take ideas and implement them into action and dare to believe that their discoveries can become the next thing we could not live without. All this fosters our human flourishing.

2020 exposed the weakness of experts who believed their knowledge was correct; however, they lacked understanding, interpreting facts without wisdom. They break things that are not broken hoping to fix them with their abundance of education, but they lack the exercise of education. They look at imperfections as a challenge to be fixed. They believe human flaws can be perfected, yet lack the understanding that man is not malleable to be heated up and bent into a mold to be replicated.

Humans have a rich history of trial and error. We try, tinker, and tack together ideas that are separate yet once combined create something new, often marvelous, and at once magical. Too often we don’t revel in our mistakes, we don’t take a risk because we fear the embarrassment of failure. We want perfection yet we don’t spend the time to perfect. The imperfect and the flawed shows a timeline of use that reminds me of the lines left by laughter and tears on a person’s face. Those lines show a life well-lived.

2020 gave our political class license to stop that living, to stop that production, to stop that sustenance of human connection because of the fear of dying. The power they derived from the meek, the unquestioning, the afraid, gave them added incentive to act against our interests. Like the seasons, the political year proved a harsh and bitter winter. The ill winds remain and the elements continue to lash and beat at us. As winter always turns into spring and then into Summer we can prepare, plan, and plant our future, broken and torn apart as we may seem. There is always hope. There is the will and human desire. There are dreams.

Find the flaws and imperfections to embrace. The promise going forward into the new year and the new decade remains. Celebrate each day as a new interval of time. Invest and improve in yourself, flaws and all. Defend freedom like a once broken piece of pottery, it is delicate. There are those who, in their rush to perfection break what took wisdom to build. There is solace in knowing that even a broken object, though not perfect, can be mended back with the golden embrace of wisdom. Our Kintsugi is the promise of that idea of America. It is alive in the hearts of her people and can be pieced back together

Happy 2021.

Radio program: https://kimmonson.com/kim_monson_show/the-blessing-of-2020-and-the-promise-of-2021-and-beyond/

Sheep or Shepherd?

 

The trip was almost canceled. My 87-year young Dad called and said they were locking down Southern California. He strongly suggested if we had not already purchased the tickets, not to come and visit. I had already bought the tickets and my wife and I were determined to take that trip as long as we and he were healthy, the airports were open and the planes were flying.

The experts, leaders, and authorities warned the Wuhan virus was ascending. Public officials deemed we were taking our lives into our hands by flying on an airplane just to visit family. We would be endangering older members of our family or those with compromised immune systems by being out in public and potentially carrying the dreaded disease. Only essential workers should fly they said. But who should decide who is essential?

Of course, our military personnel is essential to protect our country. Of course, our police, to protect us from criminals, are essential. Of course, the courts are essential to adjudicating our differences. Of course, medical personnel and their support staff are essential during a pandemic. Yet, none of these essential jobs can function unless the other “essentials” are working. The small businesses that are the very essence of our economy; the restaurants and Mom and Pop stores that are the economic engine that allows for-profit and prosperity for the other essentials to function. They are as essential, if not more so than any government worker or bureaucrat.

My wife and I weighed the risks. After all, we are healthy, feeling good and so were our relatives. We read scientific reports, listened to friends who had experienced the virus first-hand, and with this information we made the decision to live our lives fully rather to live in fear. We understood the threat and the potential situation to our health as being serious. We made our choice. We took the trip.

On the day of our departure, the airports were open. The TSA, the traffic controllers, the pilots, flight attendants, and all airport personnel were working. Airport restaurants were serving food and drinks and gift stores were open. Construction crews were inside the building still working on the Great Hall of the airport, many years behind schedule and millions of dollars over budget. Are these workers any more essential than a Mom and Pop store, a restaurant or any small business?

It reminded me of the problem-solving grid created by Milton Freedman who suggested one should look at public policy issues from the stand point of Who Pays, Who Benefits, Who Decides,
and What’s Fair?

The airport and the plane were mostly empty. Fifty passengers on an aircraft that could hold 170. The flight was smooth, fast, and enjoyable as I read an engaging book. We landed before you knew it. Los Angeles International was under a major construction project. Amazing that these construction jobs were deemed essential and government money seemed to be fueling their pace. We were the only ones on the rental car bus which whisked us to our car. Our first stop was to visit my Dad who lives ninety minutes south of L.A. We made the trip at the height of rush hour traffic in a ridiculously fast time and we were at his front doorstep in an hour and a half. Maybe they did find a solution to LA’s traffic problem; scare the populous into their homes.

The street where my Dad lives was packed with cars in this beachside community. A party was in high gear next door to him with a jazz combo playing swinging music and people enjoying themselves in sequestered Southern California. Was this civil disobedience? Was the local populace through putting up with their hypocritical overseers? It appeared so.

My Dad greeted us with hugs and kisses and told us to remove our masks. We did. He has had very little person to person contact for the last ten months since we were all told, “15 days to flatten the curve.” The populous obeyed and yet the edicts of lockdowns still came in thirty-day increments. As a healthy octogenarian, my Dad is in great physical shape and has a positive mental attitude. The music next door filled the air and was a wonderful background noise for the delicious dinner my Dad prepared of mouth-watering steak, baked potatoes, salad and the several bottles of local wine which may or may not have all been consumed. We laughed, talked, and discussed of our missing each other for almost a year and what was happening in our lives and in the world until we were too tired to continue.

The next day, we helped my Dad clean his place, did yard work, talked, and laughed some more. My Dad needed a new microwave. The store where we purchased the appliance was packed with people rear-end to elbow buying gifts for Christmas. Yet, the local restaurant we wanted to go to was open for take-out or delivery only, with no in-house dining. This is the lunacy of government picking winners and losers. We decided to order dinner from the local sushi restaurant, light the Hanukkah candles, and had a delivery service risk their life by picking up and dropping off the food in a timely manner.

The next day we drove back up to Los Angeles to visit more family from afar or in close proximity depending on their comfort level or medical situation. It was a great visit and we all survived. No one caught the Communist Chinese Party Virus. The best part of this trip besides visiting family was the airports and roads were mostly empty. Travel was a breeze. The reason for sharing this story is simply this. You can be an obedient sheep corralled in the “safety” of your home, waiting for the day when your overlords tell you it is OK to live your life. Or, you can be the shepherd of your life and live it in the full knowledge there are consequences to one’s choices living in freedom and taking responsibility for those decisions. We called my Dad when we arrived back in Denver to let him know we were home. He wanted us to turn around and come back already. Every life is indeed essential, so live it like it is.

https://kimmonson.com/featured_articles/sheep-or-shepherd/

Monsters – Real or Imagined

 Have you ever caught a glimpse of something you thought was one thing and your mind interpreted it as another?  The other day I was shaving in my bathroom and out of the corner of my eye I saw what appeared to be a pair of eyes staring at me.  It was a momentary flash.  As I turned, I realized my wife had placed a decorative jar with a variety of soaps in it on the ledge around the bathtub. The placement of two similar packaged soaps looked like a pair of eyes and the oval bar below was the mouth, wide-open as if saying “Oh”.  It was a weird occurrence. Then my wife walked by and I said to her, “We have a monster in our bathroom”.  Unsure, she said, “Where?”  I slowly pointed to the corner of the bathtub.  “You have a highly imaginative mind” was her response.

Our minds see monsters all over the place especially when we have just viewed or read something disturbing and our subconscious plays it back in the form of a bad dream.  There are a lot of imagined monsters from the Saturday morning reruns of my childhood, like the classic 1930s and 1940s horror movies of Dracula played by Bella Lugosi, Frankenstein played by Boris Karloff or The Wolfman played by Lon Chaney, Jr.

There are many imagined monsters that lurk in our local, state, and national government, service organizations, schools, and businesses that are being molded into golems. The small town I live in reacted to the heinous killing of a black man in Minneapolis at the hands of a police officer by conducting the obligatory march and rally against racial injustice to show unity with victims of police violence.  Perhaps the reported thousand participants of the twenty-eight thousand residents or 3.5 percent of the population thought it was the right thing to do. The problem they were rallying against and the unity they thought they were creating are actually divisive and delusive.

My town is made up of 91.67% Caucasians, 5.25% Asian, 2.47% two or more races, and 0.21% African American or Black.  I could not find any current information from the FBI or from local sources of any so-called “Hate Crime” in my town.  In fact, our community has been acknowledged as “A Safe Community,” “Best Places to Live” and “Best Places to Raise a Family”. It is a welcoming town.  In my neighborhood, we have people of all races, creeds, and religious backgrounds.

Yet monsters lurk in my town. The social justice warriors, aka trustees, decided the community needed a conversation to talk about the issues of the day, “systemic racism,” “white privilege”, “critical race theory” and other constructs some imagine are the problem and are wanting to “enlighten” and “educate” the dense country bumkins in our town.  We were told we need to understand about the victims of the past.  We need to understand other people’s pain.

OK, I am open-minded, so I listened to a scheduled zoom meeting entitled, “How to Be Inclusive Forum – A Community Training & Facilitated Conversation for the Town of Erie” introduced by the Mayor, Jennifer Carrol, and conducted by LaTonya Pegus, a nice, well-spoken, professional woman who is highly credentialed.  For an hour I listened to the definition of inclusion, bias, and words which would be considered micro-aggressions.  I was told how not to perpetuate a worldview of “white supremacy”. There were some useful pieces of information on communication styles and listening which I appreciated.  Yet, after listening to this indoctrination for sixty minutes, all I could think of was, is this the proper role of local government?  Is it the community’s job to be promoting a premise that because I am white, I am hateful, privileged and I just don’t understand, therefore the town is going to help me understand my unintended bias?  They are correct. I don’t get it. The packaging of this sort of reeducation is Maoist, and once again in the guise of helping, government divides more than unifies.  Conversations, discussions, lectures, books, movies, cultural experiences of people of different backgrounds and cultures, and ethnicities are wonderful opportunities to learn and interact. Yet when this sort of presentation is conducted by your local town it becomes dystopian.  I wonder when this sort of education to the community will be required by our town.  It already has become doctrine in the public schools, community groups, and in some businesses.

Since January, I have been enrolled in a ten-month course on the history of slavery with a focus on American slavery. I have read and studied what wrong ideas can produce. As an example, John C. Calhoun, the American statesman, and political theorist was a complex individual. Calhoun became known for his “cast-iron man” politics and for his defiant defense of Southern beliefs and practices.  As a Senator from South Carolina on February 6, 1837, Calhoun asserted that slavery was a “positive good”.  He twisted and contorted his defense of white supremacy in a way that today his views are rightly seen as racist.  Conversely, a case can be made that the Black Lives Matter organization with its Marxist founders touting its radical anti-western agenda and its Alinsky style tactics make it the John C. Calhoun of today.

Leftists paint America as a racist country because of this heinous chapter from the past we share. Rather than erasing the evils of slavery or tearing it reminders down, we should be learning from it. Leftists look at history from the wrong end of the looking glass.  America is the greatest story of anti-slavery in human history. In two generations the Americans wiped slavery from our land.  It took England 1000 years and France 900 hundred years. Yet America abolished slavery in about two generations of our founding in 1776.

Here are some things you don’t hear on college campuses or in the dominant media. Today, you can go to several African nations right now and buy another human being.  Today, in America, more Black Africans and Blacks from the Caribbean are successful entrepreneurs and have built flourishing lives and successful businesses where property rights are respected and there is a rule of law.  Today, there is more Black on Black crime than Police on Black crime. Today, the Black American Family has become a one-parent household, where fathers are marginalized, potential lives are aborted, and education is looked down upon because it is “too white” or “western.”

If we are to address the real monsters of today, we need to have clarity on what they are. Unconscious bias and white privilege are not those topics. Unfortunately, there will always be hatred, bias, and racism.  There will always be evil in the world. The best way to deal with these is not to institutionalize them by dividing people into races or giving special privileges to special groups.  As my friend Anders Ingemarson writes in his SEPARATE blog, “statism, with its base in collectivism and focus on an alleged group “rights,” perpetuates racism and prejudice, while capitalism, with its foundation in individualism and recognition of individual rights as the only rights, relegates racism and prejudice to the fringes of society.”

The monsters we imagine are bigger than the ones we encounter.

Link to The Kim Monson Show radio show interview 560KLZ AM: https://kimmonson.com/kim_monson_show/identity-politics-vs-freedom-of-speech/