What Happened to the Mavericks?
AMERICA IS SUFFERING FROM A “DEBILITATING MINDSET”

by Ron Ewart, ©2012

Editor's Note: Re-posted with permission of The Post & Email.

(Feb. 26, 2012) — “The kind of people I look for to fill top management spots are the eager beavers, the mavericks. These are the guys who try to do more than they’re expected to do – they always reach.” — Lee Iacocca

The other day we took in the big-screen IMAC show called “The Rocky Mountain Express.“ It told of the story of building the Canadian Pacific Railroad across the interior mountain ranges of British Columbia and finding a pass through the virtually impenetrable Rocky Mountains. While watching this documentary, the viewers were treated to a spectacular steam engine trip across the Canadian Pacific Line from Vancouver to Superior. The film described how one man, William Cornelius Van Horne, son of an Illinois dirt farmer, rose in the ranks of railroading from the tender age of 14, when his formal schooling ceased, to become superintendents and general managers of emerging railroads in America. A powerful figure of a man, this accomplished artist, violinist, and dedicated railroad engineer was asked by the Canadian Pacific Railroad Company, at the young age of 39, in the year 1882, to direct the construction of the transcontinental link from the harbor at Vancouver, British Columbia to Thunder Bay on Lake Superior.

An imposing figure with the seeming energy of five men, the mind of a true visionary and the drive to get things done no matter what lay in his path, built a railroad line across the mountainous interior of British Columbia and up and over and down the Rocky Mountains and across the southern prairies and wetlands of Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontareio. Literally carved out of the sides of granite mountains, with looping tunnels, long, curving wood-frame bridges and perilous overhangs, Van Horn directed the construction of a railroad bed that most said could not be done. He finished the line in half the time he was given to complete construction. In one year he directed the laying of over 500 miles of track. That is one and a third miles per day, every day. However, in some areas of the right-of-way, the contractors and workers couldn’t average more than five feet per day. In many of those areas, the death toll was as high as five men per mile.

An excellent biography of Van Horne can be found HERE.

The writer sums up Van Horne’s biography with the following: Sir William C. Van Horne liked big things: the largest and best locomotives, the biggest salary earned by a North American railway executive, generous (sometimes double) meals, big Cuban cigars, the massive Camagüey hotel, the huge gardens and broad roof of his beloved Covenhoven, the unusually large rooms and high ceilings of his Montreal home, the size of many of his own paintings and most cherished works of art, the grandeur of the Rocky Mountains and the CPR’s hotels, his visions of world-wide systems of commercial transportation and trading, and the greatness of the British empire. This passion for bigness, complemented by a usually keen eye for detail, was matched by exceptional energy, vision, and enthusiasm which made it possible for Van Horne to achieve or obtain many of the great things he so prized. His interests were numerous and varied, but construction of the CPR was his greatest contribution to Canada. As a railway man, he had many rivals. Others were more successful as financiers, promoters, and lobbyists, but none equaled his achievement in the building and operation of integrated systems of railway transportation and economic development, first in Canada and later in Cuba.

This was a time in North America where impossible things were accomplished by visionary men, cooperative governments and willing investors, who saw the opportunities for opening up entire continents to growing populations. Telegraph lines paralleled railroad right-of-ways, extending communication across vast expanses of open territory. Messages and news flew across the land almost at the speed of light, where before it could take months by sea, or overland by pony express or horse-drawn coaches. Towns were built up around the railroad lines to exploit almost limitless agricultural, mineral and timber resources to build our growing nations. Time to cross the continent was reduced from several months to weeks or even days and a lot less dangerous.

People from the East poured into the midlands, the mountains and finally the Pacific regions by the tens of thousands, anxious to take advantage of the many brand new opportunities that awaited them. They faced terrible hardships, injury, Indians, disease and death, but still they came and they came because of the courage, determination and vision of big men with big ideas. They came because of the mavericks who would not heel to the prevailing wisdom or the doubters, mavericks that opened up corridors of transportation and communication that were absolutely necessary for an expanding nation of free men and women. These railroads and telegraph lines were the arteries that carried the blood of commerce and the nerves of communication to the heart and soul of the North American continent.

During this time in our two great nations’ history, there were mavericks in finance, steel, agricultural, construction, mining, timber, sea-going sail and steamships, merchandise and a whole host of other commodities that were carried overland by the railroads. These mavericks became immensely wealthy because of the risks they took, the grand visions they held and the extraordinary determination to see those visions become reality.

In those mid to late years of the 19th century, America and Canada were the lands of the men who COULD and DID. These were the men of “YES, WE CAN” and they did IT in spite of civil wars, recessions, strikes, declining finances, bankruptcies, fickle governments, corrupt politicians, the vagaries of ebbing and flowing markets and a myriad of other problems that plagued them as they moved forward towards the realization of the goals they set for themselves and others. Government didn’t get in the way then, like it does now. None of what was done to build Canada and America could have been done in today’s regulatory climate. It would have been impossible. We have now become a nation of “NO, WE CAN’T” because of those laws and regulations. We can’t even build a pipeline across the heart of America because of irrational environmental concerns and the corruption of party politics.

These fearless mavericks of the 1800′s were the leaders of men and others followed them because these men were going places and if you hung on tight, you might just go places too. Fortunes were made (and lost), not only by the builders of railroads, but by those that followed the railroads and set up shop along these two parallel ribbons of shiny steel that spanned a continent from sea to shining sea, steel that was forged in the great northern cities, cities that were built by other great men with vision.

Most of these mavericks were self-made and determined, if nothing else, as was William Van Horne. Many were ruthless without regard for human life and some were pure evil. They only saw their vision. They never saw the obstacles. They just rode over them because the pursuit of their vision blinded them to all of their obstacles. There was always away around the obstacles and if they couldn’t find a way, they would invent one. Many others died because of the visions of these determined men, but without those sacrifices, realizing these absolutely essential grand visions of transportation and communication corridors would probably have been impossible.

In retrospect, neither of our two nations could have grown at the pace we did, without such men. Both countries would have been stuck in a time warp, where there would have been no fortunes made, no large middle class, poverty would have been the norm and the growth of freedom would have been virtually impossible. Man is anything but free, if he must endure a perpetual hungry stomach.

There were other great men who came along in the Twentieth Century, like Henry Ford who gave us thousands of jobs and the affordable car and expanded exponentially, the mobility of the people of a growing nation to travel great distances. Other men of vision obliged with a new source of once-thought limitless fuel, pumped out of deep holes in the ground at great risk ….. crude oil! Government responded appropriately to this new mode of transportation by building an ever-expanding network of roads within cities, from city to city and farm to markets.

Great inventors like Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla gave us the light bulb and electricity to power our homes, factories and businesses. Advances in medicine extended our life times by several decades. War machines were invented that allowed us to be victorious in two world wars and smaller battles that some say we shouldn’t have fought in the first place. These new technologies and vast raw materials allowed America to build the most powerful military machine that ever existed on this planet and it still will be if Obama can be stopped from gutting it.

Technology literally exploded in the Twentieth Century. From the telephone, to radio, to television, to microwave relays, to computers, to cell phones, to laser beams, to satellites and to GPS, life in America and across the globe took on a pace never before seen in all of human history. The planet was dramatically shrinking, literally by the day. The dreamers and visionaries in this technological expansion are too many to name here.

But some of these powerful men who made vast fortunes from building corridors of steel and those that provided the raw and finished materials and the funding for those corridors, turned their visions towards another goal. Their grand vision was the creation of greater wealth and the control of money on a global scale. Men like Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, J. P. Morgan, Davison, Vanderflip, Warburg and others decided that they could use their wealth to control nations by becoming the central banker for those nations and in 1913, several of these powerful, wealthy men, from a plan they hatched in a so-called “duck hunt on Jekyll Island“ in 1910, were successful in creating the Federal Reserve of the United States, a privately held bank owned by a whose-who of the elite, that is neither federal nor a reserve. The debate over the Federal Reserve rages on, over it being unaccountable to anyone and whether its policies work in favor of the United States, or in favor of the private owners of the Federal Reserve itself. A recent audit of the Federal Reserve leaves great, unanswered questions in this regard.

But we digress! The question raised by this column is, “What Happened to the Mavericks?” Does America still have some individuals that will cross boundaries, tame frontiers and go where other men are afraid to go? Of course. But we have conquered the continents, we have discovered the passes through the mountains, tamed the frontiers and the wild, untapped land we once were. That wild land and that frontier no longer exist. All we can do now is still fill in the gaps. Thus, the great men that were called on to open up this new land are no longer needed. The frontiers we now face are totally different. The next frontiers we will challenge won’t require the rugged individuals of by gone years. It will require a collection of individuals and a wide array of skills, new technology and new materials. There will be no quintessential, go-it-alone John Wayne, who will design, develop, build and ride his new rocket ship into the sunset ….. to explore the awaiting heavens.

Nevertheless, there is a certain kind of maverick that is needed now more than ever. He is the leader of men and women who will fearlessly rush in to tear down political fences, break up cliques, challenge the prevailing wisdom, break a few rules and drive a wedge into the domain of the powerful elites ….. in the name of freedom. His words will make the heart beat faster and when he tells those that will walk in his path to take a stand for liberty, they will not hesitate to take that stand.

Throughout history, such men have risen in times of enormous strife, to lead others against a great challenge and throughout history those great challenges have been vanquished by such men and those that will follow. During all of our wars, in small skirmishes or major battles, these men have risen out of nowhere to lead others to victory.

But the challenges we face today are totally different from the challenges of the past. We are confronted not by a vengeful enemy determined to kill us, although there are some of those, we are now challenged nationally by a cultural mindset that is embedded in the hearts of millions of the people themselves, a debilitating mindset that was put there on purpose by a government and an ideology that is wholly contradictory to and in conflict with the principles of freedom and liberty. The maverick that will rise to meet this almost silent, insidious challenge will have to possess the ability to get the people to reject this mindset that has invaded their hearts and their minds, without them knowing it. This maverick will have to be able to do what a general does in the heat of battle, when defeat is staring them in the face. This general has to convince his men to overcome their worst fears and charge into an impenetrable wall of hell fire. This ability to lead men into situations where the men’s own well-being or survival is on the line is a rare quality indeed. But these mavericks do exist.

Are there such men in America today? Sure! But we have not seen such an individual materialize out of no where as yet, an individual that has that special ability to unite a nation and lead that nation in the direction of freedom. Nevertheless, “The Parallax Prophecies” predicts that there is such a man (or woman) and he or she was born many years ago. The life of this individual has conditioned him for this moment, to suddenly arise out of no where and lead this great nation in the same direction that led those colonials who fled to a new land and a new continent across a great sea in search of freedom and away from religious persecution, almost 400 years ago.

When we least expect it, this man will raise his two outstretched arms above the multitudes and call on them to make the sacrifices necessary to preserve, protect and defend our great Republic and become a nation of “YES, WE CAN” again, so help them God! This special individual is out there. Do you see him? Can you find him in the crowd? Not likely. You won’t have to look for him though because this maverick will be looking for you and calling you to duty. The question is, how many will answer his call, will it be enough and will it be in time?

But wait a minute! As anyone can easily see, the arrival of our mythical maverick is long overdue. The accelerating methods being used by government and national and international special interests to “mold” American society and our children, are both overt and covert. They are working diligently to get into our children’s heads ….. and their stomachs, at very young ages for the purposes of indoctrination. Read about just one such overt method coming from that arrogant, out-of-control U. S. Department of Education, under their “Race to the Top” program, from the “Education Liberty Watch” website.

Ladies and gentlemen, if you have children in public schools, especially pre-school and kindergarten, you need to get off your chair and derail this program before it gets a foothold in your community.

On second thought, perhaps we don’t need a mythical maverick after all. And the situation is so dire we don’t have time to wait for him to appear anyway. Perhaps all we really need is a bunch of concerned citizens and some angry parents to take back America at the local level. Perhaps what we really need are a few million go-it-alone mavericks that will take on these bullies and give them “what for.” Perhaps you are one of those good ‘Ole American rugged individualists, like John Wayne, that will set an example for others to follow. The time is one minute before midnight. Your country needs you.

Ron Ewart, President

NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF RURAL LANDOWNERS

P. O. Box 1031, Issaquah, WA 98027

425 837-5365 or 1 800 682-7848