Force- or Freedom-Government
June 22nd, 2011 // 10:22 am @ Oliver DeMille
Two Kinds of Government
Government was invented by people for two reasons:
- To institutionalize force over others
- To protect the inalienable rights of all people in its care
Or, in other words, for force or for freedom.
All governments in history have tended toward one or the other.
When a force government attempts to protect the inalienable rights of its people, it loses strength and power. This is the message of Machiavelli.
When freedom government attempts to institutionalize force over others (of the poor by the rich or of the rich by the poor), it loses its strength and power. This is taught at length in The Federalist Papers (see papers 16-20, 51).
Because of this, free government should not do anything except protect inalienable rights.
If it attempts to do more, it moves into the realm of force government.
Unfortunately, the left has too often forgotten this limit of free government, and the right has forgotten that the people, all of us, must address and fix social challenges in private—non-governmental—ways. The problems of the poor, the downtrodden and the struggling are not government’s problem.
These are our problems. Both the left and right need to get clear on this, and in our day we all need to take massive action to address the multiple social challenges of our world. The role of free government is to protect inalienable rights; the role of free citizens is to take action to solve the plight of the needy.
“Did we come here to laugh or cry?
Are we dying or being born?”
—Carlos Fuentes
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Oliver DeMille is a co-founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of Thomas Jefferson Education.
He is the co-author of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestseller LeaderShift, and author of A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the 21st Century, and The Coming Aristocracy: Education & the Future of Freedom.
Oliver is dedicated to promoting freedom through leadership education. He and his wife Rachel are raising their eight children in Cedar City, Utah.
Category : Blog &Culture &Government &Liberty
Simple Freedom
June 21st, 2011 // 9:48 am @ Oliver DeMille
“I left the fairy tales lying on the floor of the nursery, and I have not found any books so sensible since.”
–G.K. Chesterton
Freedom is not a complex idea. But we do live in a complex world, and only complex government forms have proven able to keep those with power from exerting too much of it. The American founders mixed the simple and the complex. They simply pitted power against power, institution against institution, authority against authority. And they simply put the people in charge of it all.
The details are more complex. The House represents the people. The Senate represents the states, and also, naturally, the wealthy. The President represents the nation. The Court represents the Constitution. The States represent themselves, but also the people. The Constitution represents itself; the people just have to read and apply it. It also represents the people—it is written by them to the government, outlining limits of what the government may and may not do. The electors in the Electoral College, which elects the President, also represent the people. This is the way it stood originally.
In simple terms, the following were represented once: the wealthy and the nation. On the complex side, those which were naturally less powerful than the wealthy and national government were represented twice: the States, and also the Constitution. The least naturally powerful, the regular people, were represented in our Constitutional model four times; this is complex in design, but what could be more simple than a government by, for and of the people?
On the side of complexity, the founders mixed the ideas of Polybius, Montesquieu, Hume, Blackstone, Adam Smith and others in this process. On the side of simplicity, the people simply need to read the Constitution and the great freedom classics to understand freedom.
Another simple reality is this: When we lose our freedoms in such a system, it is always the people, not the system, which has failed. The people have all the power—if they understand freedom, read history and the Constitution, and stay actively involved in maintaining their freedoms, the complex arrangement of Constitutional freedoms will not fail.
But when the people turn to other matters and neglect to maintain their freedoms, when they allow the 17th Amendment or Butler v. the U.S. or the insertion of party politics into the government, for example, to reduce the power of the people, it becomes more difficult for later generations to promote freedom. Still, the Constitution is there and a wise citizenry has the power to reboot American freedom.
When the understanding of the citizens is simple, the actions they must take to be free are complex—even confusing. When the understanding of the citizens is complex, the actions they must take are simple.
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Oliver DeMille is a co-founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of Thomas Jefferson Education.
He is the co-author of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestseller LeaderShift, and author of A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the 21st Century, and The Coming Aristocracy: Education & the Future of Freedom.
Oliver is dedicated to promoting freedom through leadership education. He and his wife Rachel are raising their eight children in Cedar City, Utah.
Category : Blog &Constitution &Government &History &Liberty &Politics &Statesmanship
Three Wrong Lessons
June 20th, 2011 // 10:09 am @ Oliver DeMille
The result of our intermingled modern educational and class systems is too often that the modern citizen feels, as G.K. Chesterton put it, “I have no right to think for myself. I have no right to think at all.”
Lesson One: A major lesson of our modern schooling is that we are all somewhere on the social scale, we should give way to those above us on the scale and look down to those below us.
Lesson Two: Another lesson is that the teacher, the authority, the official, etc. is above us all, and we should always, always, bow to those above us.[i]
Lesson Three: Too many young people also learn that there is nothing worth fighting for—“Always walk away. No matter what!”
In fairness, these lessons come naturally with the advancing of society—but so does national decline. And these things—false lessons and national decline—historically come together.
Surely there is a time to follow authority, to humbly give way to others, to walk away from a fight. All of these lessons are part of a good education, along with the reality that there is a time to stand against authority (e.g. King George, Stalin, etc.), to reject elitism, and to fight for something that matters (against slavery, against Hitler, etc.).
A combination of these lessons is part of any balanced education. An emphasis on just one side of these lessons is mere brainwashing.
As Chesterton said, Joan of Arc “…did not praise fighting, but fought.” The same is true of Washington, Lincoln, and Gandhi. Gandhi taught that violence is not the way, but strength and standing for what is right is essential. Can you imagine Gandhi caving in to the upper class? He would bow, but in the bowing he would stand even stronger for what is right.
To really educate, we must teach all sides of the issues—not simply the behaviors of class society, dependence on authority and walking away from any threat of force. There are things worth fighting for. Each citizen must think deeply and independently. Experts should be listened to, but not worshipped.
Alvin Toffler put it this way:
“Built on the factory model, mass education taught basic reading, writing, and arithmetic, a bit of history and other subjects. This was the ‘overt curriculum.’ But beneath it lay an invisible or ‘covert curriculum’ that was far more basic. It consisted—and still does in most industrial nations—of three courses: one in punctuality, one in obedience, and one in rote, repetitive work. Factory labor demanded workers who show…up on time…take orders from a management hierarchy without questioning…[a]nd perform…brutally repetitious operations.”[ii]
This societal focus naturally influences our citizenry.
[i] An excellent list of such problematic lessons is found in Dumbing Us Down by John Taylor Gatto.
[ii] The Third Wave, by Alvin Toffler.
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Oliver DeMille is a co-founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of Thomas Jefferson Education.
He is the co-author of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestseller LeaderShift, and author of A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the 21st Century, and The Coming Aristocracy: Education & the Future of Freedom.
Oliver is dedicated to promoting freedom through leadership education. He and his wife Rachel are raising their eight children in Cedar City, Utah.
Category : Blog &Education &Independents &Leadership
A Battle Ahead
June 18th, 2011 // 11:16 am @ Oliver DeMille
A review of The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution by Francis Fukuyama
Francis Fukuyama’s recent book is an excellent commentary on the history of politics and the underpinnings of our current political systems. Readers may find things to disagree with in a book that covers so many periods of history, but this well-researched work sparks a lot of deep thinking about important and timely topics.
Three Major Advancements
Ultimately, Fukuyama sees the development of political society from tribal through modern times as the result of three major advancements. The future, he suggests, belongs to societies that maintain and effectively institutionalize all three of these organizational advantages. This view flies in the face of some widespread views, but Fukuyama’s arguments are compelling.
Consider, for example, the following likely characteristics of the decades immediately ahead:
1. The invention of centralized governments which allowed societies to grow beyond families and small tribes
The industrial age created an expectation (especially in the British and American worlds) of “sustained intensive economic growth.” Today we feel entitled to unending economic expansion. Any downturn in the economy is seen as a reason to blame our political leaders. We seem to believe that a high level of consistent economic growth is our birthright.
This is a significant development. Never has a generation in the past held such expectations. No longer are citizens content with the up-and-down economic cycle that has characterized all of history. Whether this new expectation can be maintained remains to be seen, but this is our expectation now, and we’ll continue to punish any government official who doesn’t both promise and deliver sustained economic growth.
If it turns out that constant growth is unrealistic, that there really is a natural economic cycle of ups and downs, we’ll consistently elect and then dump every politician from every party—the voters will never be satisfied. With such feelings of entitlement, we’re destined to be perpetually angry at and disappointed with our government.
Globalization has created a world of independent international elites and locally-dependent middle and lower classes.
“In the days when most wealth was held in the form of land, states could exercise leverage on wealthy elites; today, that wealth can easily flee to offshore bank accounts.”
2. The establishment of “uniform laws that apply to all citizens
This is a world-altering event in human history. The advent of widespread human freedom and prosperity came as a result of uniform laws that applied to all citizens—regardless of status, wealth, race, gender, ability or religion. Globalization trumps all this, allowing a global upper class to operate largely above the law while the masses are required to follow the laws of their local nations.
The economic benefit of being in the upper class under such an arrangement is huge—the gap between rich and poor will drastically increase as this reality grows.
Hardin Tibbs wrote:
“The proportion of people in cities is growing rapidly, and the numbers of people left in the countryside are falling. The sprawling urban megacity—somewhere like Sao Paulo, where you’ve got densely populated shantytowns right next to the enclaves of the super-rich—is a growing phenomenon around the world.” (EnlightenNext, Issue 47, 2011, pp 29-41)
3. The creation of governments which are “accountable to their constituents
Two groups will be the winners in the new system: mostly the mobile global upper class, and secondarily the masses in nations where the government is truly accountable to the people. This will impact nations around the globe, as we are already witnessing in the Arabic world.
For China, this is either good news or really bad news. If China’s government remains unaccountable to the people, its economic and military strength will at some point become a weakness. If, on the other hand, the Chinese government reforms and becomes accountable to the people, China may well become the great superpower many have predicted.
According to Fukuyama, the centralized structure of an authoritarian system can seem to “run rings around a liberal democratic one” for a time, because the leaders face little opposition from checks, balances, or other obstacles to their decisions. But this is a frailty if ever the leaders make bad decisions.
A few bad leaders or choices can bring down such a system very quickly. Societies with effective checks and balances on the centers of power are more resilient and less prone to huge decline in a single generation or even decade.
As for the United States and Europe, they must reverse the decades-old trend of centralizing power away from the people.
In short, we are seeing the rise of a global class system with increasing divisions between the haves and the have-nots. Major characteristics of this new reality include the unrealistic expectation of constant economic growth, a global upper class that is increasingly above the laws of nations, the growth of drastically divided cities, and governments that are widely controlled by the wealthy.
One great battle of the 21st Century will likely be about who controls government, the wealthy class or the people as a whole. As Fukuyama shows, through history the nations where government was accountable to the people ultimately achieved the most social success, freedom and prosperity.
The Origins of Political Order is the first of a two-volume set, and hopefully the second volume will tell us more about how the people can win this coming battle.
As the mathematical cosmologist Brian Swimme wrote: “the universe is not a place, it’s a story…” (EnlightenNext, Issue 47, 2011, pp. 52-63) The same can be said of the 21st Century, and our story will likely hinge on whether government is ultimately accountable to the people or to a small group of elites.
This is an old battle, but this is the first time it is global in scale. The challenges are thus increased and the stakes are high.
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Oliver DeMille is a co-founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of Thomas Jefferson Education.
He is the co-author of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestseller LeaderShift, and author of A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the 21st Century, and The Coming Aristocracy: Education & the Future of Freedom.
Oliver is dedicated to promoting freedom through leadership education. He and his wife Rachel are raising their eight children in Cedar City, Utah.
Category : Aristocracy &Blog &Book Reviews &Business &Community &Economics &Tribes
A Big Problem
June 17th, 2011 // 11:11 am @ Oliver DeMille
Be Afraid
We have a problem. We have a big problem. Or, as the old quip put it, “Be afraid. Be very afraid.”
As an optimist, I am usually skeptical of anything that sounds overly negative. However, I recently read a list of statistics in the Harper’s Index that I think is cause for serious concern.
Two items on the list have received a lot of press:
- Standard and Poor’s “revised its U.S. debt outlook to ‘negative’” on April 18, 2011.
- It has never before ranked the U.S. anything but ‘stable.’”
This should give us all pause. But this is a fixable situation, one which can be solved by a return to American entrepreneurialism, initiative and ingenuity.
The increase of unemployment once again in May 2011 can likewise be effectively overcome by government policy changes that incentivize private investment and spending. Many corporations are sitting on significant surpluses right now, but they are loathe to spend them without a real change in the way the U.S. government spends money and treats business.
In short, our current economic problems can be dealt with by the principles of freedom and free enterprise—if only Washington would give freedom a try. Note that neither Republican nor Democratic presidents have taken this approach for over two decades.
American vs. Chinese Views on the Free Market
But these aren’t the statistics that should worry us most. The figures which really concern me have gotten little media attention:
- Percentage of Americans in 2009 who believed the free market ‘is the best system on which to base the future of the world’: 74
- Percentage of Americans who believe so today: 59
- Percentage of Chinese who do: 67
If this trend continues, we’ll face drastically worsening major problems.
Unease about the growth of China’s power has been increasing in the U.S. for some time, but the concern has mostly centered on America’s economic decline versus the growth of China as a major totalitarian world power.
Add to this the knowledge that over two-thirds of Chinese believe free enterprise is the key to the future—at the same time that American belief in free enterprise is waning—and our sense of what the 21st Century will bring takes on a new direction.
In the United States, youth are widely taught that the key to life and career success is getting a good job, while in China an emphasis for the “best and brightest” in the rising generation is to engage meaningful entrepreneurship.
If this continues, the status and roles of these two nations will literally switch in the decades ahead: China as superpower, the U.S. as a second-rate nation with a stagnant and struggling economy. Many experts point out that China has a long way to go to “catch up” with the U.S. in military strength, but how long will this take if the U.S. economy continues to decline while China’s booms?
I have two main thoughts on this: First, good for the Chinese people! If they can consistently nudge their society and government in the direction of increased freedom, they will join or possibly even become the world’s most important leaders. The truth is that freedom works—in China as much as everywhere else. Second, and most importantly, America needs to give freedom a chance.
A majority of Americans believe in free enterprise, but many in Washington seem convinced that the government can do things better than the American people. The future of our freedom and prosperity depends on a flourishing environment of freedom.
Government can do us all a great service by altering its current policies and removing the numerous obstacles to free enterprise. This one significant shift is vital. The fact that many of our national leaders seem committed to avoiding such changes is a big problem. The longer this lasts, the bigger the problem becomes.
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Oliver DeMille is a co-founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of Thomas Jefferson Education.
He is the co-author of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestseller LeaderShift, and author of A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the 21st Century, and The Coming Aristocracy: Education & the Future of Freedom.
Oliver is dedicated to promoting freedom through leadership education. He and his wife Rachel are raising their eight children in Cedar City, Utah.
Category : Blog &Culture &Current Events &Economics &Entrepreneurship &Foreign Affairs &Government &Producers &Prosperity
