First, I have to say that I appreciate all the kind words I’ve received over the title of my new book, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business. As I said in the video above, they have been whispering to me their enjoyment, almost as if they were afraid to say it in public because the word “gun” is in it. Yet, that is entirely on purpose. A lot in The Gunfighter’s Guide will challenge previous assumptions, the most of which is the nature of conflict in business and why we as a culture need to embrace that conflict more as we have in years past. For a long time now, where we have been going has led to so much corruption because the value systems have not been on success, but in getting along. Strangely enough, I was at an event with Matt Huffman, the President of the Ohio Senate, and he gave an excellent speech that displayed his understanding of this very need for conflict in any civil exchange. Politics is a blood sport and was always intended as such. They fight so that we don’t have to in general society. But this is also the expectation in business as well. If there isn’t conflict in a discussion, then why have the conversation. All the consensus-building efforts that we have seen coming out of our academia are out of step with the American way of doing things. It’s like telling us that American football shouldn’t be about putting on pads and hitting the other guy as hard as you can to stop them from scoring a touchdown, but that we should all play flag football, and that scoring isn’t all that important. The title of my book evokes a truth that many people understand, and I appreciate that this early in the process, people already understand the need for a philosophic presentation of this very American concept.
I had wanted to tell Senator Huffman how proud I was of him and the Ohio Senate in general for passage of Senate Bill 22, which took away Governor DeWine’s health directives over Covid-19 and future overreaches with legislative control. If Huffman, George Lang, Terry Johnston, and much of the senate body had not moved to pass S.B. 22, Ohio would have been impeded by the recent Biden push for mass closures and mask mandates over the recent Delta Variant. I thought it was a big deal when the Senate did what they did, and the House followed quickly. DeWine had cut the entire legislature out of any covid protocols allowing the Governor to become a ruthless dictator over rights of health decisions which put white coat bureaucrats entirely in charge of all our lives. And it went on for way too long, essentially because nobody wanted to have a conflict with the Governor. Yet nightly at the Ohio capital, on other things, there were riots and vandalism over social causes that nobody wanted to deal with, and times were looking very bleak. Trump was being pushed out of office by a group of radicals who were not afraid of conflict. Conservatives were not being met in the same fashion, allowing activists to roll over logic and goodness without fear of reprisal. You might remember around Christmas of 2020 going into 2021 when I mentioned that Matt Huffman might be the next president of the Senate and that Governor DeWine’s powers would finally be quelled after a year of behaving like a complete tyrant off the rails and out of control. That’s what happened, Huffman was sworn in during the early months of 2021, and he went right to work doing what the legislature had been hoping to do for a long time, stand up to DeWine and return Ohio to civility with a proper government.
Huffman told his story a bit of how contentious it was standing up to Governor DeWine, who did not want a fellow Republican senate to override his veto of S.B. 22. DeWine tried to use the necessity of a single point of action to manage emergencies, which was always part of the poison pill of Covid-19. It was presented as beyond legislative control where the Dr. Fauci types would manage our lives instead of our elected government because of an emergency health crisis. But our constitutions do not indicate that liberty and freedom are only temporary factors of our daily life. Even during an emergency such as tornado impacts, hurricanes, or health crises, all people still have their rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And sometimes, we have to fight to maintain those rights. This is what Huffman, Lang, and the rest of the Senate did when they told Mike DeWine to pound sand and suck it up. They were going to override the Governor’s veto and take away his health directives. DeWine had abused his power, and he needed a slap down. It was an example of how proper government should look. It was the suitable alternative to open warfare with people storming the capital to retake their rights over the Covid restrictions. In every state, the House and Senate must fight like that on our behalf, and in Ohio, it happened. Fighting is not a bad thing. When fighting turns to permanent damage, that’s another story, but people who enter the bloodsport of politics should understand that’s the nature of the game.
That is, after all, the theme of my book and why people are saying under their breath that they like the title so much. It alludes to the American understanding that conflict is at the heart of our “republic.” When the law wasn’t present in times past of western expansion, the gunfighter’s brought some form of order to those far-flung regions. Many people were killed in cold blood and drunken violence, but the presence of conflict was the first foundation for law and order. If someone did something to someone, the threat of a gunfight was a genuine menace, and people thought twice about it. And if they were caught killing in cold blood, the community often hung people right there on the spot, killing them. Many times, innocent people were hung. But people did think twice before engaging in destructive behavior because people were not afraid of conflict as they are today. In so many ways, you have to look at our academic approach to conflict during the last century and question whether or not we have all been poisoned with the pill of globalism so that our republic would fall under those same conditions. So it is certainly my goal with The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business to resurrect the sentiment that conflict is good and healthy for maintaining a proper republic. Not necessarily with violence, but in how Matt Huffman, George Lang, and others did with S.B. 22 in 2021, which has saved Ohio from a tyrannical Biden administration looking for ground cover for their many scandals. Without the conflict with DeWine, Ohio would still be imprisoned by the white coats of bureaucracy. It seems rare these days to see such conflict and courage, but it does happen; there are Matt Huffman’s out there who understand good government and utilize it to the proper effect. And people understand that in my title, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business, something important has been missing in our business and political cultures that need to be dusted off and resurrected to full effect. And then, and only then, is when America is back and will sustain itself for the world well into the future.
Rich Hoffman
The Gunfighter's Guide: 