Robin Hood, or Prince John: Overcoming a Problem Worse than Socialism
October 20th, 2010 // 4:00 am @ Oliver DeMille
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When the government takes middle-class tax money and bails out big bankers, automobile manufacturers and other big businesses paying out huge multi-million dollar bonuses, that’s not socialism.
Socialism, like Robin Hood, proposes to take money from the middle and upper classes and redistribute it to the poor.
But during the Great Recession, the lower and lower-middle classes found it much harder to make ends meet. Many lost their jobs, and even their homes.
Where is Robin Hood when they need him? Where is their socialist bailout?
Whether or not you subscribe to the socialist ideal (and I decidedly do not), a careful consideration of the social and economic climate of the U.S. is warranted.
What is really happening? Talk radio and conservative television hosts have railed about the “rise of socialism,” but in reality something else is going on here.
When socialistic programs are introduced, the lower classes benefit and the upper-middle and upper classes pay the bill.
But in our time, precisely the opposite has happened.
In addition to increasing woes for the lower and lower-middle classes, the upper classes actually benefited from the economic downturn.
The number of millionaires grew 16 percent during the Great Recession; and those with a net worth over $5 million grew 17 percent.
So why are conservatives and Tea Partyists bantying about the s-word so much?
And after all is said and done, what difference does it make what we call it?
While the “socialism” furor may be linked to the Health Care debate and other left-of-center proposals of the Obama Administration, a deeper look shows that socialism is not the real culprit.
It is critical to understand that this distinction is not just a talking point for politicians and pundits to discuss on Sunday morning talk shows, or for academics and intellectuals to publish in scholarly journals.
By misdiagnosing the problem, we are also applying the wrong remedies and can never hope for improvement.
We are all the day vigilant against the small-time con of Robin Hood, and Prince John plunders us while we sleep.
What is Socialism?
The technical definition of socialism is government ownership of the major means of production in a society.
American Liberalism, in contrast, believes that there should be both a private and a government sector, and that the government should highly tax and regulate the private sector.
While both of these are anti-conservative, they are not one and the same, and the difference is critical.
American Liberalism does believe in limits, checks and balances; it believes in a separate private sector.
Socialism believes in none of these; it believes that the government should run the entire economy.
Obama Administration involvement in bailing out banks and auto companies certainly had liberal and even socialist overtones, but the top banks quickly paid back government loans and went back to private ownership.
In this sense, to label this as socialistic is not accurate.
Again: this is not question of semantics, but speaks to the very heart of the issue and how we should respond. (More on this later.)
In the wake of the economic meltdown, the government drastically increased regulations on large and small businesses. This regulatory activity is a basic value and tool of liberalism.
While liberalism seeks to ever increase regulation on private businesses, socialism seeks to own most and eventually all the companies in a nation.
Polls showed the Obama Administration to be left of the American populace in regard to fiscal and other types of regulations, but all within liberal rather than socialistic definitions.
It may be well argued that this distinction is simply a question of degrees.
But even in that paradigm the differences demand a greater understanding of and tailored responses to the liberal and socialist encroachments on freedom and prosperity.
If It Quacks Like A Duck…
Another reason many called Great Recession policies “socialist” is that government actions caused private businesses to shed employees at the same time that the government was hiring.
When the media shared the numbers showing that average private salaries are less than the average government employees make, the “socialism” name-calling was a natural angry response.
The Economist predicted growing political battles between taxpayers and government employees in nearly all nations.
We need to get serious about incentivizing small and mid-size businesses.
For example, a recent version of the health care bill would have required businesses with twenty employees and a $1 million/year budget would have to add $300,000 to its annual costs or pay $40,000 in fines.
Result: at least two employees would be let go and twenty people would still not have health insurance.
To say nothing of the fact that these individual employees will still have to buy their own insurance or pay additional fines.
It’s anybody’s guess how it will all shake out as the health care law undergoes endless tinkering over the next who-knows-how-long, but it’s worth asking the question: How, exactly, does this help unemployment?
In fact, it dis-incentivizes entrepreneurship and hiring, and encourages people to go on government programs. This certainly feels like socialism.
And big business is facing similar challenges. For example, Intel’s chief executive Paul Otellini said that the U.S. is driving away businesses and employers:
The things that are not conducive to investments here are taxes and capital investment credits. A new semiconductor factory at world scale built from scratch is about $4.5 billion–in the United States. If I build that factory in almost any other country in the world, where they have significant incentive programs, I could save $1 billion.”
How many jobs are we sending to other countries because of our high taxes?
This was clearly not a hypothetical situation; Intel built its latest factory in China. Said Otellini:
And it wasn’t because of the labor costs either. Yeah, the construction costs were a little bit lower, but the cost of operating when you look at it after tax was substantially lower…”
What does it mean when China’s communist business environment is more inviting to U.S. companies, more conducive to their growth, than the United States?
When did regulations and taxes in the U.S. make doing business in China attractive?
The U.S. now ranks #40 out of forty industrialized nations in appeal to business.
It’s almost as if the U.S. government doesn’t want business to succeed or grow, and only thinks that government spending and government jobs are the solutions to economic challenges.
This is easy prey for conspiracy hunters, but I don’t think Washington is capable either of such ubiquitous cleverness or cooperation.
I think it is much more likely when it comes to preserving freedom, they are simply not minding the store.
Other pressing needs have our leaders distracted, and the expedient responses they recur to also happen to militate against our future freedom and prosperity–and specifically, against free enterprise.
No wonder so many people are angry at recent presidential administrations. No wonder so many are crying “socialism.”
How can we defend against the allegation that our government purposely wants private businesses to fail or flee the U.S.?
Instead of promoting incentives that bring more business and jobs, the government is promoting higher taxes and regulations like health care that make business success more difficult.
More government regulation, increased government hiring and increased government social programs demanding ever higher taxes: these are features not only of liberal policies, but of a growing aristocracy.
Socialism Versus Aristocracy
Predictably, most Americans today who actually have an opinion on the matter readily conjure the twentieth-century enemy of free enterprise, socialism, rather than the older, forgotten eighteenth- and nineteenth-century evil of aristocratic rule.
But the fact that lower classes are struggling more than ever while the upper classes are increasing their wealth during economic downturns is a clear sign that aristocracy is the issue.
Consider this: in socialist cultures celebrity and fame are denigrated; in aristocratic societies they are esteemed and celebrated.
We clearly love celebrity at levels far beyond socialistic, conservative or even liberal societies.
Aristocracies and monarchies are the domain of such infatuation with fame, get-rich-quick schemes and the lottery mentality.
Like Shakespeare’s Antonio, we just know our ship is about to come in.
Conservatives traditionally invest in building businesses and like-minded community, liberals in educational degrees, professional excellence and credibility, and socialists in government positions.
Like characters in an Austen novel, in aristocracies like our modern America those in the lower classes fantasize about some punctuated leap in their “prospects”–from marrying rich to the modern equivalent of winning on Survivor, American Idol, The Amazing Race, The Bachelor or some other concocted scenario where the fate of the aspirants largely lies with those in power.
Note that in pyramid schemes there are a few winners at the top but thousands of hopeful and willing enablers the rest of the way down.
Why the Difference Matters
The debate between socialism and aristocracy is more than just semantical.
The technically inaccurate label of socialism allows the educated media and the elite establishment to patronize and condescend to the “uneducated” who push for change.
It allows government officials to dismiss the “uncouth dissenters” while maintaining their conviction that “they” (the “educated,” the most “talented,” most “intelligent” ones) know what the nation needs and those whose opinion really matters (the “educated,” the most “talented,” most “intelligent” ones) are completely in favor of their proposals.
Unfortunately, those citizens who put aside apathy and stand up to make a difference find themselves always frustrated because they fight the wrong battle.
If socialism is our problem, the perpetrator is the political leaders promoting socialist policies, and the philosophical left is to blame.
But if aristocracy is the challenge, then the two parties are both culprits in the promotion of a privileged class.
If aristocracy is the challenge, the citizen is his own worst enemy as he does not pay the price to rise above the mediocre education of our schools or to see beyond a complicit, dumbed-down media designed more for entertainment than positive impact on freedom and prosperity.
If we think socialism is the enemy, we will put our effort into electing different leaders, only to discover that Washington’s problems continue and increase no matter whom we elect.
By misdiagnosing the problem, we are using the wrong treatments and failing to get better.
No matter how active and engaged voters are, from the left or the right or the middle, if we continue to think that socialism or capitalism is our problem then all our efforts will continue to be impotent.
Very little will change in Washington and our problems will continue to grow.
Virile & Viral
If we realize, in contrast, that aristocracy is the real problem and that electing an upper class from either party will only worsen the problem, we can shift focus and consider what is really needed.
And the answer, the real solution, will become clear: As long as we live in a society of upper and lower classes, our freedoms and prosperity will continue to decline.
The solution is not to just elect a different leader, but for all American citizens to once again obtain the kind of education that allowed regular farmers and shopkeepers to study the federalist papers and listen to and consider eight-hour debates during the Lincoln-Douglass era.
If we think the problem is socialism, we will consider great education benign and ineffectual.
But if we know the real problem–that people in both parties and in all social strata are enabling a growing aristocratic power over our society–then we will realize that simply electing a better senator or president is not nearly enough of a solution.
True: Socialism and aristocracy share many symptoms, so electing the best leaders is still vitally important to stem big government.
But the real, unseen, issue is aristocracy. And until the American people realize this and more of us get the same quality of education as the CEOs, judges and presidents, the problems will continue to grow.
Above all, it is education that determines class levels.
Entrepreneurship is another path to leadership. This doesn’t mean that we need all enroll in the Ivy League.
In truth, the greatest classics of history are still the true library of freedom, wealth and leadership.
Virtually every town library has the great texts of liberty and success available.
The question is, do Americans value our freedom enough to end the rise of aristocratic rule by becoming greatly educated ourselves?
Will we step up to our responsibilities as citizens and qualify ourselves for our role as the overseers of government by learning about freedom, leadership, economics, human nature and the other great ideas of mankind?
As our society is on track for disaster from numerous threats (to our food supply, availability of fuel, decaying infrastructure, dependency on programs that have poor prospects for future funding, terrorism, failing economy) we all know that somebody needs to “Do something!”
We have been caught in the binary trap of either expecting someone else to “fix it” or expecting that we can make a difference just by making our voices heard.
But our moral authority and our ability to impact our society’s direction will come not from complaining about the ideas or performance of those who have stepped up to lead, but from actually having the answers to society’s ills.
We can’t just protest that the world simply must turn back the clock two hundred years.
New leadership is needed by today’s American citizens.
If we truly revere the American founders and idealize their accomplishments, we must move beyond hero worship and actually do as the founders did: We must apply a profound understanding of sound principles to the establishment of policies and forms that directly apply to our complex and critical situation today.
This we can do, just as the American founders did in their day.
As I have said elsewhere: Getting a world-class education and running successful businesses is “doing something.”
That is precisely the “something” that is called for today, and that any other solution which does not include a better educated populace has a different outcome than liberty and justice for all.
It is time for an entrepreneurial approach to getting an individualized, superb, great, innovative leadership education in the classics.
Each of us can do it, and the future of our freedoms depends upon it.
If the current growth of American aristocracy is allowed to continue, our future is destined to be less free and more harshly lacking in opportunity than any socialistic society.
The criticism of “socialism” is certainly negative; but unless we change course, the aristocracy that our grandchildren and their children inherit will be something far worse.
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Oliver DeMille is the founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of TJEd.
He is the 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 &Economics &Education &Entrepreneurship &Featured &Government &Liberty
Reclaiming Adult Society: The 4 Cultures Corrupting America & What Must Replace Them
October 19th, 2010 // 4:00 am @ Oliver DeMille
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Every child looks forward to the freedoms and responsibilities of being an adult.
Liberty is a blessing of maturity, and a free society is only maintained by a culture of adults.
This may be obvious, but it has become a challenge in our day.
The term “adult” has come to be commonly defined as anyone above a certain age–and has largely lost its qualitative nuance; but of course not all people older than twenty-one are free.
True adulthood requires more than maintaining a heartbeat for two or more decades.
To achieve and perpetuate freedom, societies need a culture which accepts and exhibits the responsibilities and leadership of adulthood.
This is more difficult to achieve than first meets the eye.
When the general culture isn’t up to freedom standards, it is easy for people to go along with the norm.
Indeed, one reason freedom is historically so rare is the difficulty of changing cultural norms.
Let’s consider four cultures that have widespread influence today.
Elementary Culture
The culture of grade schools has huge impact beyond the schoolyard.
Elementary Culture values the following:
- Staying in the good graces of those above you, especially the authorities
- Reliance on experts
- Dependence on basic needs and remedies being provided
- Playing
- Having good toys
- Learning and following the rules
- Getting rewards from the authorities by meeting their expectations
As good as these things may be for classroom and playground management, they are less enchanting as cultural underpinnings for adult neighborhoods, towns, cities, and nations.
Free citizens are not exactly marked by their desire to please government authorities or being dependent on state programs.
Nor is liberty positively promoted when the citizens focus mostly on play, getting the best toys (from cars to computers to vacations) in life, or seeking rewards from upper classes or government officers.
Obviously, order and cooperation are desirable shared values in a society.
But there is a huge difference between free citizens who have a significant say in establishing the rules and dependent citizens who are hardly involved in governance.
One of the great heroic roles in our modern culture is found in elementary teachers who work, serve and sacrifice to help to raise the next generation.
For example, 63% of public grade-school teachers spend their own money buying food for at least one hungry student each month.
This amazing statistic shows much of what is right, and wrong, with modern America.
The individual voluntarism and selfless service by such teachers is a foundation of freedom.
When parents don’t own their responsibility to care for their children (which is the case in at least some, perhaps many, of these cases), our moral imperatives demand that we must.
And when adults act like children, the state steps forward to feed and care for them.
Think of the great freedom cultures of history–from the Hebrew and Greek golden ages to the free Saracens, Swiss, English and early Americans, among others.
These citizens were not dependents and not particularly interested in pleasing the authorities.
In fact, they held the government dependent on the people and required government officials to please the citizens.
They made family and work the center of adult life, as opposed to the “bread and circuses” of Elementary Cultures in Rome and other less-than-free societies.
High School Culture
Some adults live more in a High School Culture which, like Elementary Culture, does not promote free society.
High School Culture generally values the following:
- Fitting in
- Popularity
- Sports
- Cliques
- Class systems
- Disconnection from adult society
Sometimes even teachers side or identify with certain cliques and basically join this culture. The currently popular television series “Glee” typifies this sort of class system.
When applied to adult society, this creates a culture that hardly deserves and never maintains freedom.
In many towns, for example, high school glory days represent all that is right and good, and success in sports is seen as success in life.
There are three major types of life success in High School Culture:
- Doing well in school and sports
- Raising children who do well in school and sports
- Having grandchildren who are succeeding in school and sports.
This is High School Culture indeed. In fact, in many places the activities of the local high school are the actual center and high point of culture and activity.
This happens in many traditionally conservative cultures such as many small and mid-size towns, much of the American West, Texas and the plains states, and also in traditionally liberal populations like in the South, the Appalachians and the Midwest.
Whatever they call themselves politically, the dominant culture in such places often centers on the high school and reflects high school values.
Adults living High School Culture focus on their local and private issues and hope to ignore political society until it forces itself into their lives.
At such times, the typical response is anger and rebellion.
Unfortunately for freedom, seeking to fit in, be popular, join the best clique and thereby win the caste battle, and stay as disconnected from politics as possible, do not tend to promote free society.
Whether or not these things are good for youth is arguable; but they are certainly not foundations of liberty or the ideal goals of free adults.
College-Corporate Culture
Nor is College-Corporate Culture naturally supportive of freedom.
Just as high school usually has more freedoms than elementary, college and work culture sometimes feels free in comparison to high school society.
College-Corporate Culture is usually more dominant in bigger cities than in small towns, though of course there are people from all cultures living almost everywhere.
College-Corporate Culture values the following:
- Personal success
- Career preparation and advancement
- Non-committal relationships
- Entertainment
- Status
- Pursuing individual interests
- Spending on lifestyle
People and places which adopt College-Corporate values experience more personal freedom than citizens living elementary or high school lifestyles.
But they are unable to establish or maintain freedom on the large scale over time, and they are usually not interested in trying.
“Me” and “I” dominate the perspectives of Elementary, High School and College-Corporate Cultures.\
Official Culture
In elementary and high schools there are principals, administrators, teachers and other officials who take care of the little people.
In the adult lives that mirror grade and high schools, regular citizens see themselves as being taken care of by officials and the officers see themselves as taking care of the people.
Since they value class systems and popularity, the people tend to regularly give in to those they consider in charge.
Many even feel resentment towards those who seem to rebel against the (“adult”) officials.
Woodstockers, John Birchers, the “-ism” extremists and other “rebels” are seen like druggies, gangsters and other unsavory high school cliques.
The “good” kids don’t fight the system.
College, university and corporate officials are often seen as distant, professionally rather than personally interested, upper class, and probably self-serving.
“They ignore us, and we ignore them,” is the operating principle of the regular people.
“We’re too busy pursuing our own success and fun to worry about them anyway–except to impress them.”
The officers, in contrast, see the regular people as functionaries to help them achieve big goals and successes.
Official Culture values the following:
- Respect of those in authority
- People following the rules
- The infallibility of the rules
- The need to lead significant, bold change
- Overcoming the roadblocks which the regular people naively call “freedom”
- Keeping the system strong
- Promoting support and respect for the system
- Really helping the people
- Giving the people what they really need, even if they “think” they don’t want it or understand how much they need it
These have little likelihood of promoting long-term freedom.
Note that the official value of really helping the people is nearly always truly sincere. They really mean it.
While some may consider this patronizing, like the noblesse oblige of upper classes, we can still admire those who genuinely seek to serve and help people.
For freedom to succeed, however, the majority of the people must move beyond being cared for by experts and instead adopt and live in Adult Culture.
Freedom is lost in cultures dominated by Official Culture.
For that matter, freedom cannot survive in a society run by Elementary, High School, College-Corporate and/or Official values and systems.
Adult Culture
As mentioned above, freedom is incredibly rare in history.
It occurs only with an extremely high cost in resources, blood, sacrifice and wisdom, and it is maintained only when the citizenry does its job of truly leading the nation.
Regular people must understand what is going on at the same or a higher level than government leaders, or the leaders become an upper class and the people are relegated to following child-like as submissives and dependents.
To elect and become the right leaders and support the right direction in government, the people must study, watch, analyze and deeply think.
They must study and understand the principles of freedom, and they must get involved to ensure that these principles are applied.
Adult Culture values those things which keep societies free, prosperous and happy. Such values include the following:
- Being your genuine self and therefore not easily swayed by peers, experts or anyone else
- Actively and voluntarily contributing to society’s needs
- Accepting responsibility for society and its future
- Appropriately and maturely making a positive difference in the world
- Accepting others for who they are and respecting their contributions
- Spending wisely and balancing it with proper savings and investment
- Consistently saving and effectively investing for the future
- Dedicating yourself to committed relationships
- Helping the young learn and progress
- Providing principled and effective assistance to those in need
- Influencing the rules, policies and laws to be what they should be, changing bad ones, and following the good ones
- Sacrificing yourself for more important things
- Taking risks when they are right
- Respecting those in authority, earning and expecting their respect in return, and holding them accountable to their proper roles and duties
- Balancing relationships and work with appropriate leisure, entertainments, sports, toys, hobbies and/or relaxation
- Openly discouraging and, if needed, fighting class systems and unprincipled/unjust inequalities
- Helping influence positive change while keeping the things which are positively working
- Never allowing “progress” to trample freedoms
- Promoting support for and respect of the system as long as it is positive and improving
- Really, sincerely helping the people while respecting them as adults, individuals and citizens worthy of admiration and esteem
Any move away from these adult values is a step toward less freedom.
And let’s be clear: Most people naturally want to be treated like adults.
For example, there are now more independents than Republicans or Democrats in part because the political parties so often seem to exhibit elementary and high school values.
Populist movements nearly always arise when governments seem to adopt Official Culture.
The anti-Washington populism which swept President Obama into office was largely a response to perceived officiousness by President Bush and Vice President Cheney, just as Tea Party populism arose when many felt that the Obama Administration was treating regular Americans like inferiors.
Any sense of arrogance, superiority, smugness or overwhelming and unresponsive mandate by political leaders quite predictably spurs frustrated reactions.
Both parties routinely fall short in this arena, however, as do many in non-public sectors.
All of us would do well to guard ourselves against pride, which is perhaps the most negative High School value.
When combined with the harmful College-Corporate values of pushy ambition and myopic self-centeredness, pride wreaks havoc on societal leadership, prosperity and freedom.
In contrast, adult societies value relaxed confidence, poise, genuine humility, and authentic strength.
Adult Culture benefits from such values as elementary sharing and playing, high school enthusiasm and idealism, college self-improvement and dedicated learning, corporate hard work and excellence, and official emphasis on the rule of law and authentic caring for others.
However, each of these is optimized and put in context in an adult society–the only culture which can build and retain lasting freedom.
The Hidden War
Sadly, High School and College Culture have created a war brewing between the generations.
This is not a generation gap or a simple matter of the old not understanding the young.
It is an actual financial war between today’s children and their parents and grandparents.
But the youth aren’t engaged–they are simply the victims.
For example, as The Economist wrote of Britain:
“Half the population are under 40 years old but they hold only about 15% of all financial assets. People under 44 own, again, just 15% of owner-occupied housing….If pensions are counted, the situation is even more skewed.”
In the same article, entitled “Clash of Generations,” The Economist cites Member of Parliament David Willetts in his concern about the growing financial abuse of the young by older generations.
After noting the wealth of the baby-boomer generation, the article says:
“Young people have little chance of building up similar wealth. They are struggling to get on the housing ladder, though close to a fifth of the people between 49 and 59 years old own a second home…
“On top of this, older baby-boomers have dodged two speeding bullets, leaving their descendants squarely in the line of fire.
“The first is the bill for bailing out the financial sector; the second, the effect of climate change on the cost of energy, water, flood-prevention and the like.”
Former Reagan speech writer Peggy Noonan wrote in The Wall Street Journal:
“And there are the moral implications of the debt, which have so roused the tea party movement: The old vote themselves benefits that their children will have to pay for. What kind of people do that?”
Certainly not those with adult values. As The Economist put it:
“There is an unvoiced contract that binds the generations. Parents look after their children, with a view to helping them do at least as well as they themselves have done, and grown-up children look after their parents, in the hope that their children will do the same for them one day.
“But there is now a ‘breakdown in the balance between the generations…’ Mr. Willetts cites, approvingly, the way some American Indian tribal councils used to take decisions in the light of how they would affect the next several generations.In Britain, alas, it is painfully hard to see beyond the next election.”
The same problems are widespread in the United States.
The tribal approach mentioned clearly comes from a society with adult values, unlike the philosophy guiding much of Anglo-American financial policy.
No Chewing Gum!
Besides self-centeredness, another high school value is that the “good” people always follow the officials.
John Dewey taught that the most lasting lessons learned in schools are the non-academic cultural values taught.
While it has been famously said that all one ever needs to know he learns in kindergarten, one lesson which seems to have most taken hold is that the teacher (or president, expert or agent) is always right.
This falsehood has always been the end of freedom.
Consider how recessionary times impacted the current generation of youth (ages 15-29) raised with jobs as the central goals of their life.
They know how to stay in line, not chew gum in class, stick to their social clique, and leave decision-making to the officials.
But not only have innovation and leadership not been highly rewarded in their young lives, they are alien to most of them.
Speaking of the current generation of college graduates, the experts have written:
“You’d think if people are more individualistic, they’d be more independent. But it’s not really true. There’s an element of entitlement–they expect people to figure things out for them.”
[Source: Jean Twenge, quoted in Don Peck, “How a New Jobless Era Will Transform America,” The Atlantic, March 2010.]
In the workplace, they
“need almost constant direction….Many flounder without precise guidelines but thrive in structured situations that provide clearly defined rules.”
[Source: Ron Aslop, quoted in Don Peck, “How a New Jobless Era Will Transform America,” The Atlantic, March 2010.}
“This is a group that’s done resume building since middle school. They’ve been told they’ve been preparing to go out and do great things after college. And now they’ve been dealt a 180 [by high unemployment rates].”
[Source: Larry Druckenbrod, quoted in Don Peck, “How a New Jobless Era Will Transform America,” The Atlantic, March 2010.]
“Trained through childhood to disconnect performance from reward, and told repeatedly that they are destined for great things, many are quick to place blame elsewhere when something goes wrong, and inclined to believe that bad situations will…be sorted out by parents or other helpers.
“All of these characteristics are worrisome, given a harsh economic environment that requires perseverance, adaptability, humility, and entrepreneurialism.”
[Source: Don Peck, “How a New Jobless Era Will Transform America,” The Atlantic, March 2010.]
A generation of assembly-line education has failed to prepare today’s youth for the real world.
The simple solution for the generation now between ages 15 and 29, and for a lot of other people, is more jobs.
This requires more entrepreneurial action. As Don Peck wrote in The Atlantic:
“Ultimately, innovation is what allows an economy to grow quickly and create new jobs as old ones obsolesce and disappear.”
Entrepreneurship requires adult values, not people full of high-school risk aversion and dependence.
Calling All Adults
Today we need a drastic return to the adult values in our society.
Insecurely seeking to fit in, searching for popularity, sports and toys as measures of success, dependency on government and officials, class systems, pleasing those in charge, waiting for others to structure your success, feeling entitled, thinking your resume should create success, expecting a lottery or reality TV show to bail you out, and blaming others when things go wrong–these are not things free people cherish.
The question for our generation is: Can we regain our freedoms without putting aside childish things and becoming a society of adults?
Click Here to Download a Printable Version of This Article
***********************************
Oliver DeMille is the founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of TJEd.
He is the 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 : Citizenship &Culture &Economics &Featured &Generations &Government &Liberty
The Renaissance of Family
October 18th, 2010 // 4:00 am @ Oliver DeMille
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Whatever happens in Washington, Wall Street, Main Street, Hollywood or Silicon Valley in the next ten years, it will all be irrelevant if our families don’t come together at a much higher level.
Without a renaissance of family, no new candidate can rise to save us. No new legislation, policy or program will heal our land.
On the other hand, the buttressing and revitalization of our society at the most basic level of family, though it be quiet and virtually ignored, is the most powerful catalyst to the revitalization of our freedom and prosperity.
Rising Pressures on the Family
In crisis periods of history like the one we are now experiencing, virtually everything changes –in major and surprising ways.
Since few people realize that historical cycles are driving things, most are frustrated and feel vulnerable and even victimized by widespread changes.
Many turn to government to solve our most pressing problems, hoping it can work miracles. Others turn to different institutions. Still others rely on their own individual efforts.
Few, however, realize the power of families in such times. Indeed, increased financial challenges and frightening world events often amplify the pressure on marriage and family relationships.
Divorce rates increase, family dysfunction grows, and people look outside the family for more and more help–at the very time family members need each other and can help each other the most.
Buckle Up; The Crisis is Just Getting Started
“But the crisis is over,” some say.
Gross Domestic Product is a preferred indicator by economists to determine growth or recession. GDP is calculated by combining several factors including private profits, capital values and government spending.
GDP has been in recession for the past year, but it showed small growth in the third quarter of 2009, causing some to that we are in a recovery.
The fact is that this “recovery” was actually one more quarter of decreased profits and capital values–no change in the trend of economic slowing there–masked by the other factor: government spending in the form of Cash for Clunkers and other bailouts.
And since government gets its money either by taxing the private sector or printing money, it can’t keep spending like this and maintaining a “recovery” for long without drastically raising taxes or causing inflation.
In short, reports that a recovery is here to stay are, let us say, premature. A lasting recovery will only happen if profits and values also increase. Also, one of the better indicators of where we are is the unemployment rate, which continues to worsen.
As the Family Goes, So Goes the Nation
This means that pressure on families is almost certain to increase for the months and probably years ahead.
Crisis Periods in history are preceded by Good-Times Periods, then followed by Rebuilding Periods.
If the cycles of history hold true and we face major military conflict and even the draft in the decade ahead, or even if unemployment continues to worsen, families will face even more challenges.
I am an optimist, and I’m convinced that great things are ahead for America and the world.
But let’s be clear about one thing: Our nation and our world will rise no higher than our families. If the family continues to decline, so will peace, prosperity, freedom and happiness.
The experts have studies and graphs outlining the details, but history is absolutely clear on this point:The future of the family is the future of our world. Higher numbers of single-adult, single-parent and other non-traditional families are included in this great opportunity.
A Disturbing Divergence From the Past
In past Crisis Periods, layoffs and failed businesses have resulted in the family pulling together–planting gardens, starting businesses, chopping wood to save on fuel, and otherwise facing upheavals and trials and working to overcome them together.
In our current world, with its urbanized and technologically advanced lifestyle, we aren’t following this pattern of family retrenchment. We aren’t relying less on paychecks and more on the family farm, or even leaving the family farm to find opportunity in places like the New World (1780s), the West (1860s), or California (1930s).
In our times, no geographical Promised Land has arisen to deliver us.
At the same time, the modern world keeps us busy and separated from each other–kids at school, youth with groups of friends, mom and dad holding down multiple jobs or seeking employment, etc.
Even where both adults in some homes are unemployed, they don’t necessarily spend more time together, but rather cope with their stresses and seek solutions independently.
Diminished finances for vacations, no time off at a new job, productivity-related compensation and workplace competitiveness all bring pressure to emphasize less family time and more work time.
And the technologies that used to be tools to help connect us have turned on their masters. No longer luxuries, they have gone from being pervasive to invasive to divisive; each family member has his own unique and virtual social life, and family life suffers as a result.
The average American couple in 2009 spends only 16 minutes a day talking with each other, according to a report in Men’s Health. Half of that time is spent discussing things like household chores and finances, leaving very little time to build relationships.
The same article reported that “lack of quality time” is the number one cause of tension in couples’ relationships in 2009–more than finances, work issues or other challenges.
Unlike past Crisis Periods, we are spending less time together just talking and having fun as couples and families than we did even in the past two decades. Rather than refocusing on our marriage and family relationships during Crisis, we are pulling even further apart.
The Potential Tragedy of Lost Opportunities
The simplistic reason that Good-Time Periods turn into Crisis Periods is that families turn away from each other to serve the agendas of corporations, marketing firms, schools and others.
Crisis Periods are all about recapturing the most important things–especially happy and successful families. If families don’t come together, strengthen communities, build new entrepreneurial enterprises and begin to rebuild society, we won’t see the benefits of a great Rebuilding Period ahead.
This is a potential tragedy of Dark Ages proportions. Just consider Rome in the first century, France in the late Seventeenth Century, the South after the Civil War, or modern Cambodia, Bosnia or Rwanda.
A society has no destiny that is not tied to the strength of its families. Without a family renaissance, no society rebounds from crisis.
The Good News
The good news in all this is that the bad news is good news: If the biggest challenge in our families is lack of quality time and taking the time to really talk, then the solutions are simple.
What if you spent a lot more time with your spouse talking about less urgent, more important, more fun things and enjoying each other? What if you did the same with each of your children, siblings and/or parents?
Not everyone has all these options, but clearly not enough of those who do have families are giving them enough attention and effort.
What if families spent two or three evenings a week and half a day each weekend doing fun things, entrepreneurial ventures and/or service projects together?
Together is the key word here. This is truly the way that Crisis Periods in history are solved at the grassroots level.
Usually economic or political realities force family unity and mutual cooperation in surviving and making a living. In our day it is still as vital to ending the attitudes, behaviors and habits that brought on Crisis; these same elements will keep the Cultural Renaissance progressing until things change.
Of course, this only works where families both bond within and connect without–not isolating themselves but strengthening their relationships with each other and the rest of the community.
And it works most effectively where families reject the temptation to draw factional, us/them lines, and instead reach out and build new relationships.
The Little Things That Make a Huge Difference
Here is the pattern: improve marriages, strengthen family relationships, make new friends, and build stronger connections with friends and community.
This naturally overcomes Crisis, and without it Crisis Periods persist and worsen.
Ironically, it is the little things that will most likely win (or lose) this battle. In the next decade, improving your marriage one hour a day (at least) may be the most important thing you can do for society. Same with many hours a week spent actively talking with and doing activities together with children and grandchildren.
Seldom has so much depended on such little things!
Will we follow the course of societies past that have lost their way and crumbled under the devastating forces of economic upheaval, war and other crises? Or we pull together as families and communities to create a brighter future?
If we get it right, we’ll also see a renaissance of America and, hopefully, watch it spread to the world. No matter what experts may say or what historians may someday write about our times, it will certainly be defined by either the Demise or the Renaissance of the Family.
Recommended Reading:
- Our Home (2 Volumes) by C. E. Sargent
- Leadership Education by Oliver & Rachel DeMille
- The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families by Stephen R. Covey
- Laddie by Gene Stratton Porter
- Little Britches by Ralph Moody
- The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Click Here to Download a PDF of this Article
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Oliver DeMille is the founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of TJEd.
He is the 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 : Culture &Economics &Family &Featured &History &Liberty
Freedom Leadership: America’s Opportunity
October 15th, 2010 // 4:00 am @ Oliver DeMille
Futurist John Naisbitt wrote in Mindset that success in the 21st Century will go to the opportunity leaders, not the problem solvers.
America hasn’t yet figured this out. The focus of our leaders — political, corporate, media — seems mostly on problems.
As Fareed Zakaria argues, the current debate in the United States is totally out of touch with the global reality.
The news covers Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran and North Korea, as have weekly talk shows. Americans are “obsessed with issues like terrorism, immigration, homeland security, and economic panics.”
But these all represent a preoccupation with the global losers of the past twenty years. Zakaria argues that the “real challenges that the country faces come from the winners, not the losers, of the new world.” (See his excellent book, The Post-American World.)
Rising — & Falling — Stars
How much are Americans thinking of the real challenges ahead, from China, Brazil, South Africa, Kenya, India and Russia?
These emerging powers are on the rise economically and politically, yet most Americans are alarmingly unaware. The economic growth of these nations is increasing their clout and “producing political confidence and national pride.”
The American people and the U.S. government are unprepared to deal with these new powers and their demands, choices and might. The central role of the United States in the world is about to drastically shrink, right when Washington sees America as the world’s last super power.
American political, economic and psychological letdown is inevitable.
Many of the rising powers have sectors with free economics, less regulation, lower taxes and more opportunity than the U.S. Entrepreneurs are increasingly courted and rewarded in these nations, while they are increasingly regulated and put down in the U.S. and Western Europe.
America’s Critical Choice
The United States has a great choice ahead: increase taxes to protect jobs and benefits or free up the economy in order to really compete in the decades ahead. The first is socialism, the second is free enterprise.
But here is the great challenge: the first is seen as “fixing the economy” and the second as scary, and probably depressionary.
A scarcity mentality is the cause of socialism; abundance is the foundation of free enterprise. Clearly, America today is caught in the grip of scarcity.
Welcome to our current irony. The story most Americans know is of a powerful but fearful great nation that leads the world against dark and sinister forces of jihadism and dictatorship.
What is left out of the story are the two dozen nations who are growing, prospering, and not affiliated with either side.
Washington will be forced to rethink its domestic and global strategy; forced not by its enemies but by its competitors. They are refusing to allow its meddling, and they are starting to attract those who are seeking free markets, opportunity and freedom.
On top of all this, at the same time that Americans are losing faith in their government, the new powers are experiencing a surge of nationalism; they want to be seen as strong and to spread their ways and power like the U.S. has for so long.
As the U.S. mires itself in the worst problems around the world, the new powers are attracting capital, technology and leadership by offering opportunity and freedom.
The Simple Solution
Of course, the U.S. can solve this all in one simple way — become the most inviting nation on earth. Get rid of massive regulation and simply re-establish freedom, free enterprise, free markets, true opportunity.
To do this, it will have to stop interfering in world conflicts and trying to be more socialist than Russia or Sweden.
If it fails in either change, if it doesn’t deregulate and stop policing the world, it will decline and collapse in power as did Rome, Spain, France and Britain — all of whom followed the same sick path to failure. China, Russia and India will be the new super powers.
But America’s biggest problem is that it has lost its purpose. It became the world’s leader by promoting freedom, and it lost its purpose when its major goal became power.
The freedom purpose had enlivened its domestic and international actions, and this made it great. Power as purpose — both at home and abroad — turned Washington into a place hated around the world and by its own citizens.
The United States is powerful in many ways but not in one critical way — legitimacy. Much of the world sees the U.S. as powerful, yes, but only powerful. Not good, or great, or standing for something.
What Do We Stand For?
For America to maintain a leadership role in the decades ahead, it must stand for something.
Thomas Friedman thinks it should stand for global Green. But I’m convinced that freedom is its only path to success. Without a renewed commitment to freedom, free government, deregulation, free enterprise, America doesn’t deserve to lead the world.
America must stop policing the world, and start standing for its greatest export: freedom. Unless this happens, it won’t solve its own problems or be able to help anyone else.
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Oliver DeMille is the founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of TJEd.
He is the 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 : Economics &Entrepreneurship &Featured &Foreign Affairs &Government &Leadership &Liberty &Politics
The New Global Aristocratic Class & the Decline of Free Enterprise
October 14th, 2010 // 4:00 am @ Oliver DeMille
While regulation increases and economic freedom decreases in America, other nations are going the opposite direction.
In order to remain prosperous and strong, America must revive the principles of free enterprise that made her great.
Three New Hotspots
In a two-day span, the New York Times ran two articles — “The Tel Aviv Cluster” and “Is China the Next Enron?” — on the strengths and weaknesses of China and Israel.
Written by Thomas Friedman and David Brooks, respectively, the articles arrived at surprisingly similar conclusions.
First, at the time of the articles, both nations were economic hotspots, primarily because of the high numbers of entrepreneurs within each.
Where America has become a capitol of employeeship, in Israel and China the American Dream of “making it” through business initiative and entrepreneurial enterprise is alive and well.
India could certainly be included in this.
Second, both are zones of technological growth. Of course, this stems from entrepreneurial innovation.
Where the U.S. trains most of the world’s attorneys, Chinese, Israeli and Indian students dominate many engineering and technology enrollments in many of the world’s leading schools.
Entrepreneurship, Technology & Progress
China has low interest rates, easy credit for private and business capital, and lots of investment money flowing.
Israel, as Brooks puts it,
“…has weathered the global recession reasonably well. The government did not have to bail out its banks or set off an explosion in short-term spending. Instead, it used the crisis to solidify the economy’s long-term future by investing in research and development and infrastructure, raising some consumption taxes, promising to cut other taxes in the medium to long term.”
Friedman wrote that China has:
“…a mountain of savings…China also now has 400 million Internet users [in context, the entire population of the U.S. is just over 300 million people], and 200 million of them have broadband…Now take all this infrastructure and mix it together with 27 million students in technical colleges and universities⎯the most in the world…Equally important, more and more Chinese students educated abroad are returning home to work and start new businesses.”
Brooks wrote that:
“Tel Aviv has become one of the world’s foremost entrepreneurial hot spots. Israel has more high-tech start-ups per capita than any other nation on earth, by far. It leads the world in civilian research-and-development spending per capita. It ranks second behind the U.S. in the number of companies listed in the Nasdaq. Israel, with seven million people, attracts as much venture capital as France and Germany combined.”
Challenges Coming
Third, both China and Israel appear to be on the verge of major shifts.
The Chinese challenge ahead is to bring its political institutions up to speed with the rapid spread of economic liberties.
The Soviet Union collapsed because it tried to reform by expanding political liberty while maintaining a command economy.
Traditional Chinese communism also rejected freedom at all levels, and the attempt now is to offer economic freedom while keeping a totalitarian government.
The huge amount of savings, including “$2 trillion in foreign currency revenues” available to the Chinese government gives it a lot of power into the future.
What kind of volatility is ahead for a nation with an authoritarian and oppressive government which also has the world’s largest entrepreneurial class?
As for Israel, the challenge is that increased economic and technological success further widens the gap between Israel and its already estranged neighbors. This is a huge destabilizing factor.
As Brooks says, “Israel is an ‘astonishing success story, but also a highly mobile one.’” He suggests that if the region destabilizes, the entrepreneurial class already has connections and homes in Palo Alto, for example.
American Decline
Perhaps the most telling message of these articles is the contrast with the U.S.
We’re cutting technology programs and increasing the regulatory, tax and red-tape obstacles for entrepreneurs.
Positive gains in U.S. social justice since 1964 have unfortunately and unnecessarily coincided with the dismantling of American incentives for entrepreneurial free enterprise.
Current levels of U.S. business regulations don’t allow many American entrepreneurs to compete with their international counterparts.
Trends in China, India and Israel provide more evidence for one of the most important developments in our world: The rise of a new global aristocratic class.
Interestingly, Friedman and Brooks have both written books about the new elite (see The Lexus & the Olive Tree, On Paradise Drive, Bobos in Paradise, and others).
For example, Friedman introduced the concept of the “Electronic Herd,” a new, highly mobile elite class that manages the world’s capital from their laptops and lives in places like Mediterranean beach towns on the Spanish or French Riviera, Ashland (Oregon), Austin (Texas), the Bahamas, Buenos Aires, London and so on.
This group parties in Manhattan and Switzerland, reads the great classics of humanity and today’s latest financials, and has little connection with or allegiance to any government.
Rediscovering The American Dream
America became known around the world for two great ideals: 1) freedom, and 2) a classless society where anybody could become whatever they were willing to earn and achieve.
Together, we often called these ideals “The American Dream.”
As the U.S. regulated away our free enterprise strategic advantage — especially since 1989 — its cities become more and more like the class-based European models that many American cultural elites idealize.
Today, America’s “aristocrats” are likely to be less loyal to the United States than to their corporate connections, and Americans who consider themselves patriots are likely to be dependent on job wages and living paycheck to paycheck.
Canada and various other nations are in the same situation.
The irony here is thick.
Those who care about freedom (many of whom are Independents) may have more to learn from examples like Israel, China and India than from contemporary Washington D.C. and its increasingly Europeanized institutions, dreams and objectives.
The Effectiveness of Liberty
Just like during the American founding era, freedom in our day will flourish again in any place emphasizing entrepreneurship, free enterprise initiative and major deregulation of small business and class-oriented structures.
While many nations can learn from America’s current example of religious and racial freedoms and freedom of the press, the U.S. needs a healthy renaissance of economic and political freedom.
Until our leaders, institutions and laws once again lead the world in allowing and incentivizing entrepreneurial initiative, our freedoms and prosperity will decrease.
It is time for America to import its most valuable resource: A widespread belief in free enterprise.
The world needs less of a growing elite class and more nations where freedom is adopted and applied.
Learn More:
To learn more about the current state of geo-politics and economics, and how to revive freedom, read The Coming Aristocracy: Education & the Future of Freedom and listen to The Four Lost American Ideals by Oliver DeMille.
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Oliver DeMille is the founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of TJEd.
He is the 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 &Economics &Entrepreneurship &Foreign Affairs &Liberty &Technology
