Punch Them Hippies
First of all, the title is hilarious; you know it is.
Whether author Frank Fleming came up with “Punch Your Inner Hippie: Cut Your Hair, Get a Job, and Make America Awesome Again,” or it was the work of his publisher, matters little. What follows in this new book is an entertaining yet highly-informative guide to restoring America’s fortunes.
The columnist (for PJ Media and the New York Post) is also an engineer. He brings that nimble mind to some solutions for an America that seems to have lost her way.
Fleming’s premise in his new book is that the character flaws of a hippie – laziness, whining, dependence and protesting – pose a grave danger to this country, and he also offers a solution: remaking one’s “inner hippie” into an awesome blend of independence, gratitude, ambition and confidence.
Along the way, he dispenses bits of wisdom with great humor. As he points out in the intro: “In the long, long ago, the frontiersman pushed the boundaries of this country. He set off into the unknown by himself, headed west. No government was there to help him, and he had no guarantee of food or shelter – and certainly not safety. He was truly on his own in the wilderness. Think of what went through his mind when, while exploring some woods, he heard a low growl and turned to see a mountain lion standing next to him, ready to pounce. He couldn’t call the police or animal control for help, and there was no hospital to treat his wounds. What do you think the frontiersman did? Scream? Run? Fall down and cry?”
Obviously not, and that’s Fleming’s point: we did it once, we can do it again. The plague of not taking personal responsibility, and blaming everyone but ourselves, has gotten us into this mess. So Fleming says, punch that inner hippie as hard and as often as you need to, and eventually you’ll be a self-sufficient, self-respecting member of a flourishing society.
In other words, you’ll leave ObamaLand and re-enter America the Great.
Fleming is a master of the clever thought: in a bulleted list of things a person can do if the will is there, he lists creating a business, mastering one’s finances, and, for fun, strangling two Communists at once.
In other words, he recognizes the true nature of what we call Real Americans: self-reliant, non-whining and vigorous. Think the opposite of today’s entitlement-driven rabble.
In the section on the importance of developing personal independence, Fleming makes the important point that, sure, we all say we love freedom, but the other side of that coin is … responsibility. And when we take responsibility for ourselves, we are not deterred by a bad economy or inept government.
These principles are all simple, of course, but Fleming’s ability to say them with flair is really important. It helps the reader actually remember what he read, so that he can put it into practice – an essential element of hippie-punching.
In essence, Fleming is encouraging (no, punching) all of us to stretch ourselves and aim much higher. That’s what makes this little book such a treasure/field guide. The nuggets contained inside just might forestall America’s current slide into … Franceness. Or, as hapless presidential candidate Bernie Sanders recently said, the U.S. can certainly learn a few things from Scandinavia.
Scandinavia? Really? We can?
That’s the kind of inner hippie Frank Fleming punches with glee. America is not Scandinavia and should never aim to be, for we are a people of destiny and innovation. “Punch Your Inner Hippie” is such a brilliant essay that you would do well to order copies for friends and family, especially the younger generations just emerging from the Stalinist state institutions of lower education.
Time and again in “Punch Your Inner Hippie,” Fleming exhorts us to be awesome (I’m surprised William Shatner didn’t write a foreword), and his whimsical/cranky calls for us to continually check ourselves, lest we fall into hippie fetal positions, are much needed in today’s society.
I like the way he ends his book, with another nod to the obstacles in our lives: “You will constantly face obstacles out there, things trying to slow you down or stop you. The government and regulations. Taxes. Meteors. Clamshell packaging. And it is your job to overcome everything out there. Because nothing really has the ability to stop you except the hippie inside you.”
True words. And in this comical book wrapped around a wooden paddle, Frank Fleming conjures the Fred Thompson in all of us, to great effect: “Hampered by that hippie inside you? Just summon Fred Thompson, and all will be fine.”
