History

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

What Will You Be Doing After the Coming Crash?

April 3rd, 2014 // 6:01 pm @ Oliver DeMille

After the Storm

What happens when a nation crashes? This is a fascinating question.

As people discuss the decline of nations comparisons are drawn to the fall of the Roman Empire or the fall of the Ottoman Empire, and so on.

But what happened in the years after these falls?

Of course, the first answer to this question is: that it depends on the severity of the crash or fall.

Every recession or depression, every big war or other calamity is, in a sense, a crash. In this way, 9/11 was a crash, as was the economic crisis of 2008-2010.

In setbacks like these, nations and people suffer, but they eventually get back on their feet.

After the stock market crash of 1929, the nation thought it was getting back to normal, slowly, for over a decade. Today we call this era the Great Depression, but at the time it didn’t look like the whole society had crashed. It hadn’t, though it certainly went through a very difficult time.

It wasn’t until Pearl Harbor, 12 years later, that the nation realized that almost everything and everyone would change.

The Three Types of Crash

After World War II, many things truly were different. We lived in a new nation, so to speak, with permanently altered values, economy, institutions, and vision for the future.

Some changes were arguably good for the nation, others not so much. The same kind of major fall/crash had occurred during the Civil War era and earlier at the time of the American Revolution.

Thus we have “serious” crashes of the Vietnam, Watergate, 9/11, and Great Recession variety, and also even more “major” crashes at the level of the Civil War and World War II.

If either type of crash comes at any point in the next decade, it will have a drastic influence on our lives, families, and national future.

When people speak of “the coming crash,” or “the crash,” in contrast, they usually seem to mean something more along the lines of the fall of Rome or the Ottomans—a truly world-shattering change, with the big powers almost shut down and other world players stepping up to fill the vacuum of power.

This third kind fall or crash is a Black Plague event, where a third of the population dies, or equivalent, and everything about the politics, economy and culture suffers drastic changes.

The Answer

So, now that we’ve defined three levels of crash events, how do we answer the original question? What will happen if we experience a crash or fall during the next decade? Answer:

1. If we have a Minor crash event (e.g. recession, or 9/11 level), we will see an economic downturn, lots of layoffs and fewer jobs, many full-time jobs downgraded to part-time, less buying power due to inflation. The middle class will continue to shrink, and the lower classes will grow. Much U.S. capital will flee to international markets with better returns and less government red tape. Government programs and dependency will expand, and the gap between the wealthy and the rest will widen.
2. If we witness a Major crash event (e.g. a great depression, a major war, etc.), we’ll experience everything in the list above, but two to five times more severe. It will be like a minor crash event but with a lot more impact.
3. If we live through a Cataclysmic crash event (e.g. a Pompei-style natural disaster or a fall of Rome level collapse) it could go a number of directions. The results might be kept to major crash event levels with the right leadership, or they could be truly apocalyptic, where everyone goes back to farming and trading, or marauding, as their daily occupations.

Cycles and the Next Decade

It is interesting how many people—though still a minority—feel strongly that a Black Plague-level crash is coming soon to America. And of the people who reject this, who think this idea is extreme, it amazing how many of them fail to seriously consider how sure a Minor or even Major crash event is in the next ten years.

At the very least, a Minor level crash will happen. At least one such event will occur during the decade.

Why am I so sure? Because such an event occurs at least once during every decade. This is just the passage of history.

A Major level crash event might happen during the next decade—it is more likely than at any point since Pearl Harbor—but it might not.

If no such event transpires, the cycles of history predict that it will certainly happen sometime not too far in the future.

The third level, a true Cataclysm, is much harder to predict. Forecasters will call it highly unlikely right up until it happens, then it will seem obvious that it was coming all along. This pattern has repeated many times.

Part II

How does any of this information help us?

To begin with, it is at the very least interesting that when a Cataclysmic crash comes it turns everyone into farmers, entrepreneurs, or marauders. Maybe these are really the three ways of making a living, after all – in any society – even during peaceful times like ours.

This would mean that engineers, accountants, attorneys, teachers, and every other career are really one of the three—right now. Very enlightening, when you think about it.

Which is your focus? Which do you support in your daily efforts? This is extremely valuable information, because it helps you see what changes are needed now, before an upcoming crash event at any level.

Preparing for the Storm

Next, there are certain things we can do to prepare that will be extremely helpful in all three scenarios. This is where our focus should be, at least for most of us.

• First, great education will help anyone think like a leader. This is hugely helpful in every possible scenario for the future. Those who have read the great classics, who understand the Great Conversation, who have cultivated the skills (mental, emotional, relational, and physical/practical) will know how to lead and what to do—whatever comes.The worse the crash, the more important the emotional, physical and practical skills.
• Second, successful entrepreneurialism creates resources, builds connections and relationships, and fosters an environment where more people think and act like leaders.In difficult economic times, it will be those with effective entrepreneurial experience who help create jobs and products that turn things around. This is a proven law of history.
• Third, getting involved at the local level, making connections with local leaders, is helpful in preparing for times of economic downturn or other potential disaster.When societies turn more to local leadership, your involvement and relationships can have a significant influence. Just attending city council, chamber of commerce, or other meetings of this kind can start this process. People nearly always underestimate their influence on a local level.

All three of these things will be much more effective if we start doing them before times of trouble. Those who wisely take action prior to difficult eras are the natural leaders when any level of crash/fall/downturn comes.

Winston Churchill called the time before World War II the “Calm Before the Storm.” Such a calm, like the world we now live in, doesn’t usually seem very calm at all.

But compared to what comes later, it is a time to prepare.

Are you taking advantage of this time? Specifically, how have your reading of great classics, your entrepreneurialism, and/or your community involvements increased in the last few months? How will they increase in the months ahead?

Leadership and wisdom are all about foresight, and taking action.

Whatever the future brings, these three ventures will make you a better leader, parent and friend in the times ahead.

For more on how “regular citizens” can preserve freedom, see Oliver’s book FreedomShift:

Americans who are so demonstrably willing to labor and sacrifice for the benefit of their posterity can only allow the destruction of the forms that protect our freedoms if they do not understand what freedom is, nor how to maintain it.

A FreedomShift is needed today; and to accomplish it, Oliver DeMille proposes The 3 Choices to Reclaim America’s Destiny.

Can it be possible that such a peaceful revolution can be accomplished by three simple choices made by a relative few? 

Click here for more information >>

To get a whole new level of great leadership education, join our Mentoring in the Classics course, taught online twice monthly by Oliver DeMille. To learn more, click here >>

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 &Community &Current Events &Government &History &Leadership

Dictionary Freedom: It’s Fun!

March 17th, 2014 // 11:39 am @ Oliver DeMille

Finding Words

Let’s go deep. Or really basic, depending on your viewpoint. Socrates is credited with saying that the definition of terms is the beginning of wisdom. Sometimes defining things can be a bit overwhelming, and that’s the case in our topic today. What am I talking about?

Well, I was reading through the compact edition of the Oxford English Thesaurus (a really fun read—try it sometime), and I came to the word “Political.” The list of synonyms was interesting to me: governmental, constitutional, ministerial, parliamentary, diplomatic, legislative, administrative, bureaucratic; party, militant, factional, partisan.

The first time through, I was struck by the number of ways governments can try to control people. But something else was bothering me, in the back of my mind, so I read through the list again to see if I could figure it out. I still wasn’t sure. “Maybe it’s that there’s a strong legislative and also executive focus,” I mused to myself, “but the judicial power of government is left out. As if the judiciary is really not political,” I laughed.

Then I furrowed my brow. “Or maybe it’s that this list is missing so many synonyms,” I thought. I quickly skimmed through the pages and found the word “government,” to see it if added more depth or nuance. It added the following words: executive, regime, authority, directorate, council, cabinet, ministry, regulation, supervision.

“Interesting,” I thought. I had planned to look up each of the synonyms above, one at a time, so I went ahead and turned to the entry for “constitutional.” It added the synonyms statutory, chartered, vested, official, and sanctioned.

Sharing Discoveries

“This isn’t really what was bothering me,” I realized. “It’s not the need for more synonyms. It must be something else.” I wondered what it could be. While I was thinking about this, I reviewed this growing list of synonyms and shook my head. I said aloud, “That’s a lot of government control!”

Then I got it. Somehow, the thing that had been bothering me made it into my consciousness. It was a Eureka! moment. I walked through the house, looking for Rachel or one of the kids to share my new discovery with. Nobody was awake, since it was very late at night, so I opened my laptop and started writing. This is too good not to share, after all.

What was my big epiphany? Simply this: None of the synonyms seem to have anything to do with the people. The word “constitutional” refers to rules written by the people to the government, but most people today don’t realize this. None of the other words were about the people at all, except the word “party,” meaning political parties.

That’s something. I’m not sure what it means, but in our modern language the words “political” and “constitutional” only have one major synonym that includes the people—and that one refers to political parties. Sad.

My question is, “Why?”

Citizens and Leaders

In the time of the American founding, both words held the connotation of actions and choices by the people. Why isn’t “election” or “citizenship” listed as a synonym under either in today’s dictionary? In fact, I turned to these words and found that the synonyms of “citizen” are subject, passport holder, native, resident, denizen.

“Denizen?” That’s an interesting way to view the regular people. In fact, all of these synonyms are passive, none of them are active. None of them present the citizen as a leader, as the true head of the nation.

This is consistent with our modern world, I guess, but it is still wrong. We’ve come to see governments as rulers, and people as subjects. Period. That’s sad.

While I was analyzing this, I realized that something was still bothering me. There was still something tugging at the back of my mind. “What is it?” I asked. I still had my bookmark tucked into the page where the word “political” is found, so I turned back to it and reread the synonyms. Then I noticed something, and everything clicked.

A Sharp Contrast

The word right above “political” is “politic.” Just read this list of synonyms of “politic,” and think about how these relate to politics: wise, prudent, sensible, judicious, canny, sagacious, shrewd, astute, advantageous, beneficial, profitable.

What do any of these have to do with the political world? I mean, they should be connected. They really should. But they hardly ever are.

“Wow!” I said aloud. “This is really interesting. I love reading the dictionary.” Just compare these two lists:

Does anyone else see the irony? Bureaucratic paired with Astute? Partisan with Profitable? Really? Governmental paired with Wise? It’s like a Mark Twain Guide to Preparing for the S.A.T.s.

And yes, both words, “political” and “politic”, come from the same root word, the Greek politikos, meaning “statesman,” “leader of the city,” or in modern terms, “leader of the nation.”

Decline is real.

Let’s read more dictionaries.

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 &Culture &Education &Government &History &Leadership

Why Freedom is Losing: The Battle for Our Future

February 18th, 2014 // 5:24 pm @ Oliver DeMille

De Jouvenel said it all in one profound paragraph:

“From the twelfth to the eighteenth century governmental authority grew continuously. The process was understood by all who saw it happening; it stirred them to incessant protest and…reaction. In later times its growth has continued at an accelerated pace…And now we no longer understand the process, we no longer protest, we no longer react. This quiescence of ours is a new thing, for which Power has to thank the smoke-screen in which it has wrapped itself…Masked in anonymity, it claims to have no existence of its own, and to be but the impersonal and passionless instrument of the general will.”

Let’s break this down, point by point, to understand it better:

• “From the twelfth to the eighteenth century governmental authority grew continuously. The process was understood by all who saw it happening; it stirred them to incessant protest and…reaction.”

As kings, rulers, and aristocratic upper classes took more and more power to themselves, and increasingly more over the regular people, the regular people saw what was happening and tried to stop it.

This culminated in the American Revolution and French Revolution, which happened within a few years of each other.

The American Revolution focused on replacing the old monarchial-aristocracy with a new, constitutionally established government of freedom for all classes. In contrast, the French Revolution emphasized killing off the old — literally executing royals and aristocrats in the hope that with their demise the regular people would gain liberty.

The American method quickly proved more effective in promoting freedom.

• “In later times its growth has continued at an accelerated pace.”

Today’s regular citizen has less power than people did even a few generations ago, and our grandchildren will have even less — unless something changes very soon.

• “And now we no longer understand the process, we no longer protest, we no longer react. This quiescence of ours is a new thing, for which Power has to thank the smoke-screen in which it has wrapped itself…Masked in anonymity, it claims to have no existence of its own, and to be but the impersonal and passionless instrument of the general will.”

When those increasing their power were kings and aristocracies, the regular people knew what was happening.

Today, when the new ruling class is a nameless, faceless, unknown elite, the regular people do nothing. They don’t know who is taking away their freedoms, or what to do about it.

Yet power is being lost by the regular people — and gained by the ruling elite — at higher rates than ever before. The gap between the 90 percent and the 10 percent is drastically increasing, but not nearly as much as the gap between the 10 percent and the 1 percent. In fact, the power and wealth gap between the 1 percent and the .1 percent is widening even more rapidly than the others.

If current trends continue, a tiny, ultra-powerful elite will rule our formerly free nations in a way never known before in history — and hardly anyone knows who the new rulers are. They rule by policy, influence, spin, currency transfers, behind the scenes. But their power is still growing.

De Jouvenel wrote of this in 1945, and today the power of this ruling elite only increases. In the conclusion to his great book, On Power, he warned:

“We are the witnesses of a fundamental transformation of society, of a crowning expansion of power…A beneficent authority will watch over every man from the cradle to the grave…controlling his personal development and orienting him towards the most appropriate use of his faculties.

“By a necessary corollary, this authority will be the disposer of society’s entire resources, with a view to getting from them the highest possible return…Power takes over…the whole business of public and private happiness and…all possessions, all productive energies, and all liberties should be handed over to it…The business is one of setting up an immense patriarchy, or…a matriarchy, since we are now told that collective authority should be animated by maternal instincts.”

Today’s Americans are the recipients of this prophecy come true. Today’s newspaper of record, The New York Times, announces that the new “Health Care Law May Result in 2 Million Fewer Full-Time Workers.”

Because Obamacare requires much higher costs for employers to maintain full-time employees, there is a nationwide trend to downsizing employee workweeks. People are supposed to tighten their belts, make do on less income, and pay higher taxes. This is a massive shifting point for the economy.

Many corporations are avoiding the increased taxes and health care costs by moving their operations offshore, to other nations, citing less regulation and more business-friendly tax codes. It’s hard to blame them for seeking greener pastures and shores with more freedom.

Families that were once supported by one wage earner now can’t make ends meet with the incomes of both parents — so they go deeper into debt.

The American Dream is dying.

A new ruling class is rising behind the scenes.

A different future — a lowering standard of living — awaits our children and grandchildren.

Unless something changes.

Regular Americans walk past dusty books on shelves (full of real solutions for our current national problems), click on the television, and settle in for an evening of entertainment…

Somewhere there is a fading memory…of fiddling while Rome burns.

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 : Aristocracy &Blog &Education &Government &History &Liberty &Politics &Statesmanship

A Huge Shift is Coming to America

January 23rd, 2014 // 10:00 am @ Oliver DeMille

Category : Blog &Business &Citizenship &Constitution &Economics &Education &Entrepreneurship &Generations &Government &History &Politics