Government

The Hillary Machine: A Surprise is Coming, by Oliver DeMille

June 14th, 2014 // 5:31 am @ Oliver DeMille

Setting the Field

The Hillary machine is gearing up. A new book by Hillary Clinton is coming out. The liberal media is gushing about Hillary—will she run, or won’t she?

Every discussion on this question is used as an opportunity to encourage voters to support “the first woman president.”

A prime time national TV special is dedicated to her, in a fashion usually only reserved for State of the Union coverage.

Just watch the ads. Her face fills the screen in a larger-than-life campaign style poster. Talk shows gush about how deftly she’s handling her skeletons—from Lewinsky to Benghazi. Monica Lewinsky herself does a once-in-twenty years article putting the whole thing to rest.

Commentators and anchors mention and re-mention how brave Hillary is the face of these difficulties.

If you are a fan of Mrs. Clinton, this all makes perfect sense. If not, you are likely frustrated as the media coverage amps up.

Not Quite the Norm

Of course, this is presidential politics as usual. Except that it isn’t. The election is well over two years away. Most presidential elections don’t get started until after the midterm elections. So why now?

That’s the surprise. The Hillary machine is gearing up to do something the Obama team never could. Despite President Obama’s personal popularity, he never had coattails. He got elected twice, but he lost the first midterm in a huge, historic way, and even when he got re-elected he carried very few Democrats with him.

Unlike Ronald Reagan, or even Bill Clinton, Obama didn’t have much of a coattail effect.

Hillary might. It seems like she will. Thus the interesting timing. For months Republicans have been anticipating a big sweep in the 2014 midterms. Strengthening their power in the House. Winning back the Senate. Maybe overturning Obamacare.

Of course, the President would veto such a vote, but at least the Congress would have its say. And it could certainly defund parts of the Affordable Health Care Act. This would set up the GOP for a powerful run in 2016 where it might gain enough Senators to override a veto.

Republicans have been licking their chops for months. After all, just look at how many seats they gained in the last midterm.

The Odds

But now Hillary has stepped into the fray. Not officially. Just powerfully. Will she have coattails? All indications are “yes, absolutely.” Obama won with small margins over Romney in three key voting groups: women, Latinos, and independent voters in the swing states. These carried him to two victories.

By all accounts, Hillary will have significantly bigger majorities in all three of these electorates.

The more noise she makes before the 2014 midterm, the more likely these groups are to vote and encourage their friends to go to the polls this year. If she has coattails on election day, like she does in the surveys, she’s going to rain on the Republican’s parade. Not just in 2016, but this year in the midterms.

And as for 2016, she is the presumptive winner. No Republican is even close. No Republican is even mentioned in the same sentence as her potential opponent. It’s the most fait-accompli presidential election since Reagan ran for re-election. It’s almost uncontested at this point.

Of course, a lot of time still has to pass, and a lot could happen. But where is a possible contender who can ignite political passion and excitement at Hillary’s level? Or even close to it? Nobody is on the horizon. Will such a person eventually rise? Maybe. Maybe not.

An Early Start

Why is Hillary doing this now?

Because she can.

Because it leaves the Republicans ineptly twiddling their thumbs, hoping someone, anyone, can gain a national following and hopefully slow her down a little.

Because the sooner she starts, the sooner the electorate will get tired of hearing about Benghazi and stop caring about her skeletons.

Because it just might swing the 2014 midterms away from a sure thing for the Republicans—making the 2016 run a referendum against conservatism on every level, a true mandate for one party that would be unequalled since the sweeping Reagan election of 1984.

Creating the Legacy

But most of all she is doing this because Hillary is, for good or worse—depending on your viewpoint—not just another politician. She is a reformer, pure and simple. Her history proves that she isn’t a “let’s win, and then enjoy the fruits of office” politician at all. Nor is she a “let’s set a legacy for history” seeker as much as the last four presidents. She wants action. She wants change. Even as a first lady she promoted Hillarycare.

Imagine what her plans are as president. She’ll take action, not play politics. More than Bush, Clinton, Bush or Obama. She’ll push, cajole, shame, and relentlessly exert the power of the White House to get Congress in line behind her Rooseveltian agenda. If she has coattails now, in 2014, even before she officially runs, she’ll be unstoppable in 2016-2024.

Whether she is a Hawk or a Social Crusader remains to be seen, and will probably depend on world events.

Either way, she won’t sit still, content with a few wins. If she ends up being a Social Activist, she will likely make Obamacare look like the first small step of a national progressive revolution. She may well eclipse FDR as the modern reformer and usher in a whole new level of government size, participation in everyday life, and influence. This won’t be anything new.

If we vote for it, we’ll get what we asked for.

If you like this direction, sit back, get some popcorn and smile while you watch the show unfolding over a year earlier than expected. If not, you’ve got less than six months to do something about it.

Oliver DeMille is the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling co-author of LeaderShift: A Call for Americans to Finally Stand Up and Lead, the co-founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of TJEd.

Among many other works, he is the author of A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the 21st Century, The Coming Aristocracy, and FreedomShift: 3 Choices to Reclaim America’s Destiny.

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 &Citizenship &Current Events &Government &Politics

Where Do You Stand on a Constitutional Convention?

June 3rd, 2014 // 11:18 am @ Oliver DeMille

An Invitation to Join the Current Debate

Please participate in a conversation with us. Here goes:

Background

I received the two emails within a week of each other, and they really made me think.

First of all, they made me happy. I’m so glad there are two people out there so passionate and studious about a topic that most Americans don’t ever think about.

That’s great.

The fact that there are two such people actually making contact means there are certainly a lot more engaged with the issue, and actually these were only 2 of dozens of notes I’ve received on the same topic. Wonderful.

We need this kind of citizen participation in order for our freedom to work and last.

The Debate

Second, well…just consider these two notes:

“Oliver, why do you support a Constitutional Convention that will send delegates from each state to rewrite our Constitution? Don’t you know that the participants will be almost entirely today’s politicians and attorneys, and possibly a few famous Establishment Academicians from the Ivy League or Berkeley thrown in, and that they’ll reject everything in the Constitution, get rid of the three branches and the checks and balances and who knows what else? Anyone who supports this just doesn’t understand freedom.”

I had to respond that I have never supported a Constitutional Convention, in fact I have written against it on various occasions. Some readers got confused when I quoted a couple of well-known supporters of a Convention, thinking I agreed with them.

Actually, those who read my full article could see that I quoted them to show that they were up to no good—because these particular supporters of a Convention want to use it to reject the Constitution and go to a Parliamentary system. Bad idea for freedom.

I have to point out, however, that some people who support a Convention do so for all the right reasons. Still, if a Convention happens, its actions will all depend on who gets sent as delegates.

The second note was very different, though similar in tone:

“Oliver, how can you not support a Constitutional Convention? I know you think it will be hijacked by today’s lawyers and politicians and used to throw away the Constitution and replace it with something much worse, but how is that any different from what’s happening anyway? If we don’t hold a Convention, we’ll continue to see the politicians and special interest groups just circumvent the Constitution, and the President, Congress and Court just ignore it when it’s inconvenient.

“This problem is getting worse, and most people really think that we’re under the Constitution. But we’re not. It’s ignored or circumvented every day, and this trend is only growing. At least with a Convention the loss of our freedoms will be out in the open. People will know what’s happening. And there is a chance, a slim one I grant you, but a chance, that the people and states will send good delegates who really do something to refocus on the principles of the original Constitution and help restore our freedoms.

“Without a Convention, there is absolutely no chance of this at all. Why don’t you support at least a chance for freedom? Without a Convention, Washington will just continue to destroy the Constitution piece by piece until our freedoms are entirely gone. A Convention gives us a slim chance for freedom, while no Convention gives us no chance.”

I’ve heard this argument before. In fact, I heard it from one of my mentors, W. Cleon Skousen, who said almost exactly the same words. When he said this back in the 1990s, I argued that the Constitution was still mostly intact, and we should give the natural tension between branches of government the time it needed to correct the problems.

He countered that it was headed in the wrong direction and would soon become unsalvagable without either a Convention or some major world crisis that forced a Convention—or something like it. Most of his predictions have certainly come true, the Constitution is much less followed or valued than it was just twenty years ago when he and I enjoyed in a number of deep discussions on this topic.

For example, the Spring 2014 edition of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy has no less than 8 full articles on how the federal government is right now further ignoring or circumventing the Constitution and drastically encroaching on state’s rights!

Would such states now feel the need to send good, freedom-supporting delegates to a Constitutional Convention just to get their rights back?

Should those of us who have opposed a Convention change our minds before all of Cleon’s predictions happen?

Or will a Convention just speed up the loss of our freedoms and give us less time to do something else—outside a Convention—that really could work? After our long and deep discussions, Cleon and I agreed on how we thought this point would go.

More later on what we decided…

What Do You Think?

So, what do you think of these two arguments? More importantly, where do you stand?

Will a Constitutional Convention help us?

Do you think it gives us a slim chance for a restoration of freedom?

Do you think anything else realistically gives us a better chance?

I have a strong opinion on this, but before I share more about it I want to see what you think. Seriously, what do you think can turn our nation in the direction of freedom (and end our current direction of decreasing freedom and inevitable decline)?

Is a Convention the answer?

What, if any, other truly realistic policy answers are there? Specifically?

I’m excited to see how many people care enough to answer, and what great ideas you have.

How to Share Your Vote

Please don’t just rehash the two views above. If you think a Convention is a bad idea, for the reasons above, just write: “My vote is against a Convention.” If you think a Convention is needed for the reasons above, just write, “I’m for a Convention.”

But if you have any third ideas beyond a Convention that can really fix America, or different reasons for or against a Convention, please share them.

[Be civil and polite in this; I’ll just delete any name-calling or uncivil responses or words toward anyone or any view joining this discussion. Every view deserves to be heard.]

This topic is too important to turn impolite.

This is a very important discussion, and I’ll tally the responses and share some that really add to the topic, along with my own ideas on what needs to happen—in a future article.

I look forward to reading your thoughts!

Oliver DeMille is the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling co-author of LeaderShift: A Call for Americans to Finally Stand Up and Lead, the co-founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of TJEd.

Among many other works, he is the author of A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the 21st Century, The Coming Aristocracy, and FreedomShift: 3 Choices to Reclaim America’s Destiny.

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 &Citizenship &Constitution &Culture &Current Events &Generations &Government &History &Leadership &Liberty &Politics

Who Will Stand For Freedom

May 21st, 2014 // 11:10 am @ Oliver DeMille

The Destiny of Freedom

In 1961 the great legal scholar Bruno Leoni wrote about freedom in modern times.

He said:

“It seems to be the destiny of individual freedom at the present time to be defended mainly be economists rather than by lawyers or political scientists.”

Why? Leoni’s answer was intriguing:

“As far as lawyers are concerned, perhaps the reason is that they are in some way forced to speak on the basis of their professional knowledge and therefore in terms of contemporary law.”

As a result, since modern law is too often in the business of reducing freedom rather than supporting it, most of today’s attorneys have become experts on the opposite of freedom.

How They Speak

As Lord Bacon would have said, “They speak as if they were bound.” Over fifty years later, the same is true of nearly all today’s economists, teachers and professors. Sad.

The modern intelligentsia has become a body of experts on force. Their expertise is usually focused on how to reduce freedom—though few use these specific words to describe their careers.

Leoni continued: “Political scientists, on the other hand, often to appear to be inclined to think of politics as a sort of technique, comparable, say, to engineering, which involves the idea that people should be dealt with by political scientists approximately in the same way as machines or factories are dealt with by engineers.

“The engineering idea of political science has, in fact, little, if anything, in common with the cause of individual freedom” just as “the contemporary legal systems to which [attorneys are now] bound seem to leave an ever-shrinking area to individual freedom.”

Leoni’s words cut right to the heart of the matter.

When I was in college in the late 1980s, I heard a speaker tell a group of young student leaders how to influence society. I don’t remember his exact words, but his meaning was clear.

He told us, “If you want to make the nation and world more committed to liberal ideals, become a journalist, professor, teacher, or attorney. If you want to promote conservative goals in society, go to business school and become an executive.”

It was a shallow, but prophetic, suggestion. In the three decades since, his recommendation has proven accurate for two whole generations, and today it is part of the rising generation’s culture.

Pushing the Wrong Direction

But what profession(s), if any, stand today for individual freedom? The economists have mostly gone the direction of law—bound too often by their profession’s expertise in how to reduce freedom.

The days when Leoni spoke on the same podium with Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek are long gone.

Likewise gone to the dustbin of history is the era when many business executives advanced the cause of liberty as one of their main goals. Now the drive is to survive in the global economy, usually by expanding one’s company outside of North America and Europe.

This is the overarching focus of most boards and executives.

The economy now rewards growth, not promotion of freedom—just like the professions tend to promote young people who support the push for more institutional controls and power, not more liberty for the masses.

As the divide between the rich and the rest widens, the pressure to impress the Establishment grows. Youthful ideals (such as freedom) are the last thing on today’s executive agenda.

The Factory Model

In the midst of the Charter School movement of the mid-1990s, I spoke on the same stage as a courageous woman who had founded a successful East Coast inner city Charter high school. In a moment together in the Green Room, I asked her how long she thought she could keep teaching the principles of freedom in her cutting-edge school.

She replied that, given the pace of intrusive government regulation over Charter schools (and schools in general), she thought she had 5-10 years before she would have to reject state funds and turn the school private.

Today, over 15 years later, the school has grown into a lucrative business, regulation has shut down the original curriculum and replaced it with one practically identical to the public schools in the same city, and this lady still runs her Charter school.

But where her school once stood for freedom against the mediocrity of the public conveyor belt, it has now joined the factory model.

And she is now “respectable,” not an educational reformer or freedom thought leader any more, but just another of the city’s high school principals—professionally reined in, committed to “the system.”

She has even stopped teaching the freedom classics that convinced her to start the Charter school in the first place.

This professional caving in to institutional pressure is what Leoni lamented in 1961 about his beloved profession of law. But today it is much more widespread.

The “civilizing decline and fall of the professions” is nearly complete. Now most (not all) lawyers, teachers, professors, economists, journalists and executives fight for the same side—big institutions, the Wall Street-White House nexus, the Ivy League-Federal Government connection, the Boston/New York City/Washington D.C. corridor, the big business/big government power elite. The Establishment.

In all this, who will stand against elite rule?

Who will stand for freedom?

Unheeded Messages

Leoni’s book, Freedom and the Law, a fantastic classic, was written in an attempt to convince the legal profession to take a stand for liberty, not slip into the easier current of seeking benefits from big government. Leoni predicted that his outcry would fail to convince enough people to turn down such lucrative promises, but he felt he had to try anyway.

Freedom was worth it.

Leoni made it clear that every loss of freedom is an increase in constraint, and constraint by government is always autocratic. No exceptions. Therefore, every minor decrease of freedom is an attack on the very roots of liberty.

In a sense, Leoni did the same thing Virgil tried to do centuries ago when he saw Rome falling. Virgil warned that a loss of individual freedom here and there would trigger a loss of freedom for everyone in the nation. But he was basically ignored.

In fact, his great work on this topic, entitled Georgics, is still hardly even read or studied today.

Sadly, the message of warning about losing freedom seems forever destined to go unheeded—until it is lost, at which point people get very interested in the topic.

Leoni’s view of freedom takes us back to the basics. He argued that freedom is ultimately nothing more than the Golden Rule, the idea that we should only do unto others what we would be happy having them do to us. To the extent that this is followed in a society, it is genuinely free.

To the level it is ignored, for whatever reason (private or governmental), freedom declines.

Important Questions

To understand freedom, using this definition, just ask yourself: “Who would I give the power to make all my decisions for me?”

Your answer tells where you stand for freedom. If you say, “nobody,” or “God, and nobody else,” you are adamantly a supporter of freedom. If you say “the government,” you are adamantly against freedom. If you say, “my employer, and government, and local committees and boards,” you are choosing socialism.

Note that the question was who would you give the power to make ALL your decisions, not some of them, or a few of them, or certain decisions, or even a lot of them. All of them. The answer tells you where you stand on the freedom question.

Leoni expands this one question into several:

1. How do you want to be treated?
2. Are you willing to treat others the way you want to be treated?
3. Are you willing to voluntarily sacrifice to create and maintain a society where everyone is treated this way?
4. Who will rule in such a society, who will choose these rulers, and how can these rulers be kept from using their power to treat people in wrong ways?
5. Why do you allow society and rulers to treat you and others in wrong ways?
6. What are you doing to ensure that everyone is treated the right way?

These are the questions of freedom.

What are your answers?

 The future belongs to innovation,
not conformity.

Oliver DeMille is the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling co-author of LeaderShift: A Call for Americans to Finally Stand Up and Lead, the co-founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of TJEd.

Among many other works, he is the author of A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the 21st Century, The Coming Aristocracy, and FreedomShift: 3 Choices to Reclaim America’s Destiny.

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 &Citizenship &Constitution &Current Events &Economics &Education &Entrepreneurship &Generations &Government &History &Leadership &Liberty &Mini-Factories

7 Kinds of Government (An Alarming Analysis) – Oliver DeMille

May 5th, 2014 // 11:42 am @ Oliver DeMille

Power and Obedience

Every government seeks to increase its power. And “power” is control over obedience, according to the great writer Bertrand de Jouvenel.

“Force alone can establish power, habit alone can keep it in being…”

But one more thing is needed to have absolute power: credit. (This is Jouvenel’s word, meaning “recognition” or “validation” – not lending.)

This means that any government wanting great power must come up with some way to openly reward people who obey its commands.

In short, any entity trying to control obedience must find a way to use force, to maintain a habit of obedience among the people, and to give credit and recognition to the most obedient.

This makes obedience popular and lucrative, and disobedience dangerous and unpopular.

To gain the obedience of the masses, Jouvenel taught, a government must first convince the people that they should obey. Then it must show them that they will hurt if they don’t obey, and be rewarded if they do.

Part I: Six Bad Types and One Good Type of Government

There are seven main ways to persuade the people that they really should follow a government, and six of them have been used multiple times in history to increase the power and force of bad governments. Freedom is decreased any time the people believe any of these six:

1. The Divine Right of Kings (“God made me your ruler, and your eternal salvation depends on obeying me and my agents.”)
2. Majority Rules (“If most of the people vote for it, the rest should follow, even if the vote is evil or ridiculous, because we are all part of the whole and must follow the majority decision.”)
3. Benefits to the People (“If you vote for me, I’ll make sure you get more of x and less of y.”)
4. The Need for Order and Security (“If the government doesn’t have the power to protect you, bad people will hurt you; so give us more power—we promise, we’ll never, ever abuse it. Just trust us.”)
5. The Pure Force Doctrine (“If you don’t obey us, here is what we’ll do to your parents, spouse, children, reputation, body, and possessions…”)
6. The Invisible Government/or/A combined Pure Force and Order and Security system on Steroids (“A few of us will know the secrets and make the decisions so that the rest of you can relax and enjoy life. Trust us, because though historical governments have abused power, we never will.”)

Any government or politician arguing any of these six dangerous doctrines should immediately set off a warning bell to every citizen.

Exactly none have ever maintained their trust; all have been abusive of their power and their people.

Moreover, all six of these arguments are fallacies; none are a true reason for giving power or obedience to a government.

The Seventh Form: You

The solution to all of these is the 7^th form of government: The Informed Citizen. This is the doctrine of regular people 1) having the vote to determine who will lead them, and who will not lead them, and also 2) having the wisdom to keep a close eye on everything government does and keeping it in line if this is ever needed.

Without the second part of this—regular people closely watching government and keeping it checked—all governments end up as one of the six bad types. In all six, freedom is eventually lost. In fact, all six types eventually turn into The Pure Force style of government.

But don’t just take my word for it; do the math: There is no exception to this in history.

By the way, the worst type of government system is The Invisible Government. In this model, the government operates largely in secret, exerting Pure Force whenever and however it wants without effective media or citizen oversight.

In fact, many people living in an Invisible Government system don’t even realize that Pure Force is happening every day – until they’re the ones on the receiving end of power abuse. And under an Invisible Government, such “complainers” are often branded as paranoid or rebellious non-conformists who are rocking the boat for everyone else, who prefer to enjoy the “security” and “prosperity” the uber-powerful government provides. (The big party poopers. Why can’t they just get back in line and enjoy the gettin’ while the gettin’s good??)

The only way to stop the six bad kinds of government—including eventually becoming a Pure Force government—is The Informed Citizen society. Without this, no nation can last.

The American founding generation, and the American framers, established an Informed Citizen model. It wasn’t perfect, and because of slavery it never fully flourished until after the Civil War. Once slavery was abolished, the Informed Citizen system began to deepen and expand.

By 1945, the United States, with less than 6% of the world’s population, was producing over half of the globe’s goods and services.

Turns out that freedom works.

But freedom only lasts when The Informed Citizen stays strong and active.

Are you such a citizen?

Part II: How to Know Which System Your Government is Following

Today we live under an Invisible Government model (with Pure Force steadily increasing in power) where a few power elites are expected to know the secrets and make the big decisions so the rest of us can just live our lives.

If this trend continues, the entire freedom system of the United States will experience further decline. (Are those just words, words, words to you? I sincerely hope not. Ponder for a moment what that means for your children, and your children’s children.)

If this trend continues, the entire freedom system of the United States will experience further decline.

The way to determine which system your government uses is simple: How does your government and nation treat the weakest, most vulnerable, least powerful among you, les miserables; and, how does it treat your enemies?

As Jouvenel said, expansionism is part of the character of a nation seeking more power.

By these measures, Rome was powerful but it wasn’t great. Slaves, women and children were chattel, literally owned by their masters. Enemy cities were leveled, the inhabitants tortured and killed or sold into slavery.

The ground was salted so nothing could grow for generations to come.

Likewise, the British Empire was powerful but cruel. The lower classes were frequently treated like slaves (read Dickens, for example), the wealthy were often aloof and domineering, and the people in foreign colonies such as those in India and Africa were consistently exploited and mistreated.

Money and power were used to manipulate nearly every transaction and relationship.

In contrast, once slavery was abolished in the United States, America stood for the principle of freedom to millions around the world.

It raised a Statue of Liberty in the New York Harbor that invited all the poor and mistreated from around the world to immigrate to our shores and join us in freedom.

It fought for European and Asian freedom and asked for no colonies or tributes in return.

During this era, America genuinely aspired to live up to the ideals of an Informed Citizen system.

Two Paths…

This focus has changed in recent times. How do we now treat the poor or struggling immigrant yearning to be free? The unborn baby? The captured enemy? We exclude, we terminate, we torture.

Yet because the regular citizen does not hold the torturer’s knife we are able to (falsely) claim a semblance of morality. We comfort ourselves in plausible deniability.

This is precisely how Invisible Government works.

But when our government agents torture in the name of our protection and freedom, they act in our name.

This means we bear responsibility—unless we attempt to decry and end such behaviors.

When they came for the unborn babies, we turn a tearful eye. But it kept happening—to millions.

When they came for the captured enemy we turned a blind eye to torture. We played Javert, thinking the government knew best. But even if this were true, when we allow our government to torture it will eventually turn such measures on us.

This is a law of history.

When they come for the weary immigrant, who risks his life just to send a few dollars home to feed his child like a modern Jean Valjean, we frown in disgust and send him on his way. An Abraham, a Jesus, the Bishop in Les Miserables would have thrown open their arms and proffered (personal) resources of sustenance, hospitality and welcome.

Too few of us follow their example.

We stand at a crossroads in modern America. On the one hand, we are quickly headed toward overwhelming Invisible Government that spies on us, expands its controls over us, and every day increases its tentacles of force.

On the other, we can be Informed and Active Citizens.

These are the two choices.

“The face of power changes,
but not its nature.”
—Bertrand de Jouvenel

(See FreedomShift, by Oliver DeMille, for more commentary on and solutions to these trends.)

Category : Blog &Citizenship &Community &Current Events &Economics &Government &History &Leadership &Liberty &Politics

Funny: Imagine a Different America

April 17th, 2014 // 8:01 am @ Oliver DeMille

Joke for Thought

The column was a joke (literally). But in addition to being funny, it really says some very interesting things.

Written by Joel Stein in Time magazine (March 24, 2014), it is a blueprint for how the United States should break into two separate nations.

Consider some of what Stein wrote:

• “We should peacefully break into two countries, one made of red states and one of blue. The red one would still be called the United States of America, since it would otherwise have to alter the lyrics of every song its citizens know. The blue one would be renamed something racially inclusive and long and hard to remember. The Exceedingly Long-Named Country would be free to have the laws it has always griped about not being able to pass. Instead of guns, the cops would carry Change.org petitions.”

• “Once the blue states were their own country, they would develop a better appreciation for the South, as a foreign country they could visit when Mexico seemed like too much effort and Canada too little…. A place with the best breakfasts in the entire world. Where it’s easy to navigate since everyone speaks English, but figuring stuff out is still a bit of a fun challenge because, after all, it’s not really English. A place where you can shoot guns, drive cars with combustion engines and drink beer that isn’t painfully bitter—all at the same time.”

• “This split would in no way prevent Southerners [and Westerners] from vacationing up North for the same reasons they always have: they have relatives there and have no choice.”

Again, though meant as a joke, this describes some of the real differences between the Blue and Red states. Klein continues:

• “The South…could pass laws every month not to raise its debt ceiling since, let’s face it, no one is going to lend a Southerner money.” The North “could make environmental treaties with foreign nations about how to extract natural resources, since they’ll have no natural resources anyway.”

Very funny.

The Un-United States

What’s missing in Stein’s fictional proposal is how the southern red states and the western red states will get along. Since they won’t, they’ll just split too.

And what about the swing states? Florida, Ohio and West Virginia have a lot more in common with each other than most of their geographical neighbors, so maybe they’ll break away and create a fourth nation.

Colorado is part of the blue states anyway, so geography is already archaic in the new system.

But that’s just the beginning. Nevada and Utah are basically the opposite of each other, but Nevada is also the opposite of California—in a totally different way.

Nevada can’t co-exist well with either, but it can connect with Arizona and Montana.

Texas will probably want to its own nation. And that’s just the start…

Time to Stop Laughing

The more I think about it, the less funny it is. People who just want Washington to get along sometimes miss a key truth: the conflict in Washington is a lot less extreme than the conflict would be between capitol cities of competing nations.

As John Jay wrote in Federalist Paper 5:

“Should the people of America divide themselves into three or four nations…envy and jealousy would soon extinguish confidence and affection, and the partial interests of each…instead of the general interests of all America, would be the only objects of their policy and disputes. [Afterwards], like most other bordering nations, they would always be…involved in disputes and wars [with each other].”

The result, Federalist 5 said, would be, first, that America would be weak against all its foreign enemies, and second, the new blocs of states would be dangerous “and formidable only to each other.”

Why Washington Feels Broken

Sometimes it’s nice to sit back and laugh at ourselves.

Yes, Washington can be a frustrating, angry, and dysfunctional place, but it could be a lot worse. Southern and Northern California could be two separate nations, for example. Or Michigan and Ohio. Atlanta and Athens, Georgia. Manhattan and the Bronx.

Talk about conflict. The thought makes Democrat versus Republican feel tame.

The U.S. is not, at it’s essence, federal. The Founders created the federal government as a national security entity that would protect, and loosely cobble together, thirteen distinct states.

When the federal government tries to homogenize fifty unique states, treating them with a one-size-fits-all mentality, the result is dysfunction.

Washington feels “broken” today because it is. It is trying to do something it was never designed for.

Oliver DeMille is the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling co-author of LeaderShift: A Call for Americans to Finally Stand Up and Lead, the co-founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of TJEd.

Among many other works, he is the author of A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the 21st Century, The Coming Aristocracy, and FreedomShift: 3 Choices to Reclaim America’s Destiny.

Oliver is dedicated to promoting freedom through leadership education. He and his wife Rachel are raising their eight children in Cedar City, Utah.

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