Is Government Broken?
October 26th, 2010 // 4:00 am @ Oliver DeMille
Is our government broken?
More and more people think so. The current presidential administration makes periodic claims that we are in an economic recovery, but at the same time growth is still slowing and unemployment figures stay around ten percent.
With more American deaths in Afghanistan during the last week of July than any week to date, things seem to be deteriorating at home and abroad.
To make matters worse, few people believe that the opposing Republican Party has much more to offer than the Democrats.
With neither side poised to really fix things, few Americans have a lot of hope for the future of government leadership. Here a few of the issues vexing citizens.
A Missing Recovery
First, even though many politicians have been claiming that we are experiencing an economic recovery, it doesn’t feel like it to most Americans.
The Obama White House doesn’t seem very friendly to small business.
Most of the entrepreneurs and businesses who do hold cash aren’t about to hire or expand in an environment where their taxes and regulatory burden could be increased at any point by an unfriendly Administration.
Ironically, Washington is responding by promising to increase taxes and regulations. Understandably, those who hire are skittish.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Giethner said in July that we’ve reached a point where private hiring—rather than government spending—is the answer to economic growth.
But until the government starts supporting small business, and as long as it refuses to incentivize free enterprise, the economy will struggle.
Author Arthur Brooks argues that the nation is 70% in favor of free enterprise and about 30% opposed, but that the 30% are in charge.
The 30% has gained much influence over citizens by convincing them that it was private business that caused the recession in the first place.
Somehow, this view has successfully convinced much of the public that the Bush Administration, big banks, Wall Street and all small businesses are the same group.
Those who read the fine print, however, are clear that policies from the Clinton and Bush Administrations led to the mortgage crisis.
Moreover, big government and big business together caused the recession. In the meantime, both ignored small business and continue to do so.
As a result, the 70% is confused and unable to keep the 30% in check. So more government policies hurt the economy and make it unwise or unfeasible for small businesses to hire and grow.
In the meantime, much of the Right is busy labeling Democrats as “socialists” rather than helping incentivize growth and prosperity.
Both sides seem to mean well, but one has unbounded faith in government and the other is preoccupied attacking that faith.
While the two sides posture, the plight of small business is sometimes discussed but remains unaided.
What the Citizens Want
Second, this problem is deeper than most people realize.
Since World War II, the United States has promoted a mixture of free enterprise and big government. In history, societies typically emphasized one or the other.
When big government ruled, enterprise was highly regulated and taxed; where free enterprise was the focus, taxes were small, regulations were minimal, and governments were limited in size, scope and budget.
But in modern America, no politician from any party can claim success unless he/she has “done something in office.”
And to nearly all Americans, “doing something” means increasing government action to benefit the pet cause or regional constituency.
If President Obama doesn’t pass much of his agenda, his political friends and competitors alike will label him ineffective.
Americans in general want their politicians to do a lot and are disappointed when officials fail in this.
The irony of the American voter is that “doing a lot” immediately earns most politicians a place on the voters’ list of officials to vote out.
Americans today want the impossible: low taxes and lots of government programs.
The Economist summarized it this way:
In the end, the question of whether a country is governable turns on how much government you think it needs. America’s founders injected suspicion of government not only into the constitution but also into the political DNA of its people. And even in the teeth of today’s economic woes, at least as many Americans seem to think that what ails them is too much government, not too little.
“But there is a catch. However much Americans say they want a small government, they seem wedded to the expensive benefits of the big one they actually have…With deficits running at $1 trillion a year, and in order to stay solvent, they will have at some point to cut spending, pay more taxes, or both….To balance the books, politicians have sometimes to do things the people themselves oppose—even in America. That will be the true test of whether the country is governable.”
Americans must either choose big government and be willing to pay for and submit to it, or they must move toward smaller, less intrusive government and be willing to enjoy fewer government programs.
When voters want the prosperity of freedom along with the bread and circuses of massive government, every election is a referendum on incumbents.
Eventually, though (and the day of reckoning appears to be close on the horizon), something will have to give.
Unfortunately, few societies make such hard choices until they are forced upon them by war, depression, pandemic or other major crises.
Sadly, few nations have the leadership or the fortitude to adopt the simple solution of spurring major growth and prosperity by de-regulating, de-taxing and freeing up the economy.
Freedom works, but few in history have been willing to adopt it.
Lost Leaders
We are unable to overcome these and many of our deepest challenges because of the way we distribute leadership in our society.
The American founders envisioned a truly great educational system, built around schools in every locale, to train their youth in the great ideas of mankind’s history, as well as the latest practical arts and sciences.
They built the early American schools to train empowered citizens who would protect freedom, foster prosperity, leadership, and character in all walks of American life.
They wanted an educational system that prepared their youth to become effective in their families, communities, and careers.
This vision helped create a nation that by 1946 produced over half of the world’s goods and services with only 6% of the globe’s population.
Freedom works, and the success of the American constitutional-free-enterprise model was spectacular. In the process, this system over time addressed, and — in some cases, even began to resolve its biggest negatives, including slavery and other inequities.
Unfortunately, by the late 1930s, the citizens and leaders who built this great model of success, freedom, and prosperity sent their children and grandchildren to schools which rejected this system, and instead adopted a new style of education focused mostly on career training.
Sadly, these American schools established by the our founders were replaced after World War II by the German model which was based on socio-economic class divisions.
In the “new” system, the elites still received leadership education (like all citizens had before 1939) while the middle and lower classes were educated only for jobs.
As this system grew, a Germanic-style grading system reinforced class-society advancements among the youth.
The maladies of credentialism, class divisions, and reliance on experts made their way into mainstream American culture. From 1939 to 1979, these contagions grew and infected the Founders’ classless and “free American” vision.
In such a system, the motto was: “A students work for B students.” The concept of “The Company Man” spread and Americans became addicted to big institutions.
Freedom and entrepreneurial values gave way to competing for executive positions and benefits packages. The goal of employeeship replaced the American dream.
Career became the purpose of schooling in almost everyone’s mind, and ownership and leadership values begin to literally disappear.
Eventually big institutions became truly massive, and anything except employeeship was considered inferior and backward.
In this environment, young people with a sense of leadership, idealism and ambitions to make a great impact on society split between the Left and the Right.
Those coming from traditionally conservative families tended toward majors and careers in business, while youth from more liberal backgrounds leaned towards the media and legal professions.
Most of today’s national leaders were part of this split.
The Reagan era ushered in a revolution of support for and promotion of free enterprise ideas and values.
Numerous non-traditional business models (like multi-level and network marketing) put individuals at the center of building a personal business rather than working as an employee, and eventually non-traditional educational options (from private and charter to home and online opportunities) grew in popularity.
Employeeship was still the dominant view, but a rising minority embraced the freedoms and prosperity of entrepreneurship. The dot.com boom and Roaring 90’s soon followed, and the entrepreneurial sector slowly grew.
Today a new culture of education and business is evolving out of the Great Recession and all that led up to it. A new maxim seems to be much more complex than in past generations:
- B students work for C students
- A students teach or work in government
- Those who cared little for grades and a lot about learning are building small businesses
Note that “those who cared little for grades and a lot about learning” often come from non-traditional private, charter, home and online learners, as well as from immigrants who are leading in entrepreneurial successes. And more than a few come from the traditional schools.
Since small business accounts for 80% of America’s economic growth, this is a significant development. Unfortunately, the number of people in the entrepreneurial sector is still very small.
Whether purposely or as a side effect, we are still training the overwhelming majority of our youth to believe that being A students means getting a good job and that employeeship is the greatest goal for education and even lifestyle.
Satirist P.J. O’Rourke addressed the problem this way:
America has made the mistake of letting the A student run things. It was A students who briefly took over the business world during the period of derivatives, credit swaps, and collateralized debt obligations. We’re still reeling from the effects…
“It was a bunch of A students at the Defense Department who planned the syllabus for the Iraq War….The U.S. tax code was written by A students….Now there’s health care reform—just the kind of thing that would earn an A on a term paper from that twerp of a grad student who teaches Econ 101…
“A students must do what teachers and textbooks want and do it the way the teachers and texts want it done….Such brisk apple-polishing happens to be an all-too-good preparation for politics. This is because a student’s success at education and a politician’s success at politics are measured mostly by input rather than outcome.”
Perhaps even more disturbing is that most of our Idealistic youth with ambitions to improve the world are still going after jobs in big business or big government.
The thing is, working for a big corporation or in a government job are unlikely places to really make a positive difference in the world.
We are distributing leadership in the way aristocratic and socialistic societies always have, and the future will unfold accordingly unless something changes.
We desperately need a rebirth of the entrepreneurial ideal.
The New Religion: Employeeship
Unfortunately, it’s not just the schools and universities that are continuing this outdated focus on jobs as the end-all of education and life.
Movies and television often demonize entrepreneurs while dedicating most of their time to stories about employees.
Full-time sports channels seem to dedicate as much time to the business side of athletes as to the entertainment, making sports role models as valued for their lucrative contracts as for their abilities on the playing field.
Even elected officials more typically refer to their role as a job than as public service.
Recent administrations and the media have referred to the constitutionally-titled commander in chief as the nation’s CEO. There are many other examples.
Because the “job-is-life” view is so prevalent, it has even become normal for successful entrepreneurs to see their work as done as soon as they can live comfortably.
In earlier generations (those that built and maintained American freedom), such successful entrepreneurs considered it their duty to spend the second half of their life helping society greatly improve.
Perhaps only parents and community leaders can effectively counter this trend and help more youth who want to help improve the world seek a true leadership education and seriously consider engaging in entrepreneurial careers.
Repairing the Break
So, to answer our question, yes, government is broken. The break is repairable, but it will take some major work and effort on the part of this generation.
When freedom is decreasing through constantly increasing regulations, government is broken. When the free enterprise system is under attack from our own government, government is broken.
When a tenth of our working society can’t get a job, and when the government responds by increasing taxes and regulations on those who could provide the jobs if they were free to do so, government is broken.
When two parties hold a monopoly on government, and where both increase spending and regulation no matter who is in office, government is broken.
But all of this misses the real point.
When most of society seeks employeeship above all else and every facet of life revolves around employeeship, much more than government is going to be broken.
Employeeship certainly has a place in effective nations, but it should be prioritized behind things like family leadership, citizenship, and private ownership.
Another name for these is life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (or alternatively, as Jefferson originally wrote, “life, liberty and property”).
A successful society is made up of at least the following things:
- Effective parents, grandparents and other family leaders who help raise good, wise and industrious adults to take their place
- Citizens who are well-educated in freedom and leadership and who keep government, business and other officials in check so the society can remain free and prosperous
- Owners who improve the prosperity of society, in a free enterprise system where all can be owners
- A constitutionally guaranteed freedom where all are treated equally before the law and all are protected in their inalienable rights
How the President Can Repair the Economy
In the 2008 election President Obama was supported by the Left (who loved his promises of economic liberalism), but he was elected by independents who saw in him a possible end to the corruption of the Bush years and a potentially great leader for the United States.
The “Leadership Thing” swept him into office. Now, the Obama Administration could greatly boost the economy by deeply promoting entrepreneurship—both symbolically and in reduced taxes and regulations.
Such incentives would spur more hiring, investment and expansion, and a recovery would follow that Americans could really believe in.
In fact, the President could probably accomplish this without changing any policy at all, simply by warming to small business and genuinely becoming friendly to entrepreneurs.
As a friend, a member of a minority, told me about President Carter:
“I didn’t agree with his politics or policies, but I just feel that he loved me and my people and cared about us. I never felt that from Reagan or Bush, and so I voted Democratic even though I was more aligned with the politics of the Republicans.”
An old advertising proverb says that people make choices emotionally and then use logic to defend it.
No matter what Washington says, and no matter what the economic numbers show, most entrepreneurs are unlikely to increase jobs and boost the economy through investments as long as they think the man in the White House basically dislikes and mistrusts them.
Even liberal-leaning businessmen are worried that the President isn’t supportive.
The White House could drastically help the recovery simply by changing its bias against small business. If this is just a perceived dislike of business, not a real one, they can simply change their message.
If, on the other hand, the Administration really does mistrust or dislike small business, it should reconsider. After all, unlike Wall Street, big banks and big corporations, small business simply cannot be blamed for America’s economic challenges.
It has been the victim of the mistakes made by both big business and past government. Yet it keeps plugging along, keeping the recession from being much worse.
And small business certainly is the group most likely to overcome high unemployment.
Indeed, when the economy does make a serious comeback, entrepreneurs will be leading the way. Hopefully, the Obama Administration will extend its “Yes, We Can” philosophy to those who have the most potential to drastically grow our economy.
Conclusion
It is time for all Americans—from the White House to our individual living rooms—to pour out a deep, genuine and heartfelt admiration and “thank you” to those who run small businesses.
Whatever the politicians of any party do, the greatest need is for parents, grandparents and all of us to rekindle an excitement for entrepreneurship in the youth.
The future of America’s freedom and prosperity may well depend on it. As long as free enterprise isn’t flourishing, our government will be broken.
***********************************
Oliver DeMille is the founderof 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 : Business &Constitution &Culture &Current Events &Economics &Education &Entrepreneurship &Generations &Government &History &Leadership &Liberty &Politics
How to Destroy the Constitution
October 25th, 2010 // 4:00 am @ Oliver DeMille
DEMOCRATS, REPUBLICANS, AND INDEPENDENTS don’t agree on much, but most of them do believe in the excellence and effectiveness of the U.S. Constitution.
A group this diverse will, of course, have some disagreements on the details, but it is amazing how nearly all involved Americans support the document.
All agree that the Constitution catalyzed America’s growth to freedom, prosperity and world hegemony.
Freedom works, it turns out; the Constitution codified and structured freedom at a level unparalleled in world history (affiliate link).
For at least fifty years, however, two major groups have disagreed about the fundamental direction of the nation as it relates to the Constitution.
Conservatives have seen the Constitution as an ideal to live up to, and operated on the premise that the country must be careful not to stray too far from the original intent of the founders.
They resonate with such things as strong national defense, separations of power, and protections of property.
Liberals, in contrast, have in general felt that this great document guaranteed basic rights and due process, but that it was meant as a starting point from which to continually amend and improve our society.
They tend to focus on individual rights, equalities, and the democratic attitudes of the document.
As a third, newer group, independents, tend to want the United States to value original intent, yet also make improvements where they are wise and practical.
Vital Foundations of Freedom
In view of all this, there are a few things that are fundamentally vital to the success and maintenance of the U.S. Constitution.
If these vital things are lost or ignored, or even changed in any way, the system will break down and our freedoms will decrease. These vital foundations include:
- Separations of power between the executive, legislative and judicial branches
- The independence of each branch
- Checks and balances
- Guarantees of freedom like “no ex post facto laws,” “no bills of attainder,” and the freedoms outlined in the Bill of Rights
- Separations of power between the federal and state governments
Over the years, some have argued that we are in danger of losing some of these vital foundations of constitutional freedom. Certainly there has been some weakening over time.
But for the most part, the vital facets of the Constitution have held strong.
Weakening the Constitution
Unfortunately, in just the past few years we have seen major affronts to these vital constitutional guarantees. And more amazingly, there has been little concern voiced in the media or among the American citizenry.
When we let our freedoms slip away without a fight or even without concern, we take freedom, prosperity and happiness away from our posterity.
What kind of people do that? Are we such people? These are questions each of us must face.
Moreover, the loss of these vital constitutional foundations are not issues of parties—most liberals, conservatives, greens, radicals, extremists, moderates, hawks, doves, independents and nearly everyone else is generally opposed to losing our freedoms.
So why do we sit by and let it just happen?
The answer is simple, although the reality is quite complex:
We tend to let our freedoms slip away because they are tucked away in documents and policies that we don’t ever deal with directly.
We either ignore current bills before Congress or, if we do get involved, we focus on the publicized issues instead of the many layers of complexity.
In short, we don’t read the fine print.
The Power of Fine Print
Many Americans ignore the fine print in job contracts and mortgage papers, blithely signing our signatures and trusting others to handle the details.
Consider how lax we are with proposed bills in Washington DC: They are written by someone we don’t know and voted on by people few of us will ever even meet.
What few people realize is that these things have direct and major impact on our lives!
The problem in modern America is not that an individual can’t make a difference, but that nearly all of us are too distracted to even consider trying.
It seems ridiculous, maybe, to think that regular people should read the fine print of proposed legislation and existing laws and try to improve them. It sounds extreme and even crazy to suggest that without such close scrutiny from the citizens our freedoms will be lost.
But it is still true. This is one of the things which makes the American founding generations so truly amazing! Yes, they sacrificed greatly in the Revolution.
But many nations have sacrificed mightily and still failed to be free. Yes, the founders wanted to protect themselves from the usurpation of Britain. But so has every other colony and group of people facing a dominating government.
Yes, the founders loved freedom and wanted to pass it on to their children and posterity. But who doesn’t?
Almost every human society has yearned deeply and sacrificed much to be free. However, the founding American generations did something that almost no others have ever done.
They read the fine print!
They taught their children to read bills, laws, court cases, legislative debates, executive decrees, and bureaucratic policies. They read them in schoolrooms and at home. They read them at picnics and by candlelight after a long day’s hard labor.
They said they would consider their children uneducated if they didn’t read such things.
Consider just one example, from a textbook read by all Vermont school children in 1794:
“All the children are trained up to this kind of knowledge: they are accustomed from their earliest years to read the Holy Scriptures, the periodical publications, newspapers, and political pamphlets…the laws of their country, the proceedings of the courts of justice, of the general assembly of the state, and of the Congress, etc.
“Such a kind of education is common and universal in every part of the state: and nothing would be more dishonorable to the parents, or to the children, than to be without it.”
Now, in fairness to most human societies who wanted to be free, the regular people through much of history couldn’t read at all.
The founders understood this, so the first federal law passed under the newly ratified U.S. Constitution required any territory seeking statehood to show that it had an effective educational offering for all children.
They considered it a great blessing of providence that they could read and had the opportunity to pass on education to nearly all Americans. They saw this as a fundamental requirement for freedom.
They mourned for the many generations of humans throughout history who had no chance at freedom because education was denied them or simply unavailable.
But what would the founders think of three generations of today’s Americans who can read, who live in relative affluence, have ample leisure time, but who choose to ignore government documents?
I think they would be shocked, and then angry.
After the painful price they paid to establish a free nation; the many sacrifices of their families and lives, imagine their frustration that today’s Americans won’t even read what the government is doing.
Eventually, after their anger wore off, I think they would resign themselves to this reality: Unless Americans start reading government documents again, we will lose our freedom—again.
In case this sounds extreme, let me reiterate that the founding generations read government documents, in detail, from all three branches, including all levels from federal, to state, to local.
Then they raised their children to do the same. It was second nature to them because they wanted to remain free.
Free people read the fine print. Then they act on it. To put it simply: those who don’t, do not remain free.
This is the reality of history, from Ancient Israel to the Greeks, Saracens, Franks, Anglo-Saxons and every other free society in history.
I can find no exceptions.
In fact, in mixed societies with classes or castes of both freemen and subservients (like in Athens or the Roman Republic), only the upper classes read government documents; and only the upper classes were free citizens.
Three Tragedies
In just the past two years we have seen three of the major vital foundations of constitutional freedom ignored.
People who don’t read government documents, or at the very least printed media reports about government documents, aren’t even aware of these structural implosions in our constitutional system.
They have no idea of the tragedy ahead unless these things are reversed.
Moreover, people who don’t read government documents are often swayed by the anger of politicians or mass media so that they think violating the Constitution is okay if the nation is mad enough.
For example, the vital constitutional foundation of “no bills of attainder” was broken in the wake of national anger at Wall Street after the economic meltdown of 2008-2009. Even those who knew it was broken felt it was justified given Wall Street’s mistakes.
But when we let the government break the Constitution because we are really mad, we will soon watch it break the Constitution when somebody else is mad.
This reminds me of the old story of the so-called unaffected groups who ignored Hitler’s men while they took the Jews, then the foreigners, the gypsies, the handicap, and the white collar professionals, only to wonder why no one was there to help when Hitler’s men finally came to their house.
The moral of the story? Stand up for the Jews, or any other group unjustly attacked. That is the character of people who will remain free.
Because we were so angry at Wall Street after the economic crisis, we also ignored or just accepted the “ex post facto” laws unconstitutionally passed and applied in 2009.
That’s two strikes against the Constitution, and in less than a year!
The third strike came in the health care law.
Now, before I say more, let me be clear that I did not side with either the Democratic law as it was passed or with the argument from the Republicans that health care need not be reformed. Reform was necessary, but the way it was done is a major problem.
Some Democrats, some Republicans, and a lot of independents agreed with this. There is a lot more that could be said on this, point-by-point on every facet of the law. But that isn’t my purpose here.
My deepest concern is with the fact that public sentiment regarding such policies and issues as immigration, marriage, detainment/torture, health care, finance reform, foreign military campaigns, etc., is governed by the tidal forces of activism and apathy—neither of which is delving into the fine print details in the laws that strike a major blow to the most vital foundations of the Constitution.
Using the Health Care Reform law as a case in point: The Constitution separated the powers of the federal government from others that would be left to the states or lower levels, or the people.
This is as fundamental to our freedoms as separating the executive, judicial, and legislative branches, or outlining specific checks and balances.
Take away the provision of separating state and federal powers, and the whole Constitution is in danger of failing.
The founding generation felt so strongly about this that they insisted on adding the Ninth and Tenth Amendments to protect this separation and maintain states’ rights.
Later, the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government could take some actions within states under the commerce clause, but only the states had the right to require individual citizens to buy a good or service.
The Court also ruled in Gonzales v. Oregon that the federal government does not have the authority to “define general standards of medical practice in every locality.” It also “has recognized a right to medical self-determination, notably finding it within the Fifth Amendment’s due process clause.”
The health care law is the first federal law to break these, and it sets a dangerous precedent for the future.
In short, if this stands, future U.S Presidents and Congress can add one or two sentences in any bill at any time that requires Americans to do or buy anything—and pretty much nobody is likely to know until the law is passed.
Each new generation is acclimatized to the level of government overreach that they find themselves in, and it rarely occurs to them to object.
The Overseers of Freedom
Some might argue that our elected representatives should keep an eye on such things and take care of them for us.
True enough; except for one thing: Despite of all their good intentions and willingness to step up and lead, most of these representatives are ultimately just like “us”; they are not much more inclined than the general population to read the fine print!
Contributing to this brand of governance is the status quo climate that slaps an “extremist” label on those who do try to raise concerns about the process or consequence of our legislative and regulatory trends.
The bottom line is that our elected officials often fail to do anything about these fine-print additions to legislation.
Sometimes, even when such things are taken out of bills, the agencies which implement these laws simply write them back into their operating policies and enforce them anyway—even though they are not technically law.
With a system like this, the people are the only true overseers of freedom. If we don’t do it, freedom will be lost.
The founding generations read resolutions, bills, laws, policies, executive orders, ordinances, court cases and judicial commentaries on cases.
They wanted to be free, so they did what free people always do: They read the documents of government. They studied the fine print.
Where they saw dangers to freedom, they took action.
Unfortunately, too often any criticism of a political party’s policy is interpreted by people as an attack on that party. In this case, it is not my purpose to criticize President Obama’s push for health care reform.
I am simply concerned with the way this law treats the U.S. Constitution.
Presidents Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush also promoted policies that could have threatened constitutional principles.
It is the role of politicians to promote policies and changes they feel are needed, and at times these push the envelope of the Constitution.
Congress and the Court must do their constitutional role of analyzing and responding to such proposals, but ultimately it is up to the people to be the Overseers—to protect freedom.
Societies where the regular people aren’t allowed to read or comment on the laws are Totalitarian, Authoritarian, Dictatorial or Communistic.
Societies where the regular people are allowed to read and comment on the government and law, but instead decide to leave it to others, most often adopt aristocracy or socialism.
In contrast, if we want to be free, we must read the fine print.
Freedom only lasts in societies where regular citizens:
- read government documents, think about and discuss them
- do something to change them when needed
- teach their children to do the same.
If we become such people, the future of freedom is bright. If not…
***********************************
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 &Citizenship &Constitution &Culture &Education &Government &Independents &Leadership &Politics
Why We Need a Renaissance
October 22nd, 2010 // 4:00 am @ Oliver DeMille
The problem with revolutions is that they throw out the good with the bad.
Promoters of revolution gather support by peddling hate of the current system and those who lead and benefit from it, so when they get around to making changes they have actually discredited much of what is good in society.
Indeed, this is why some scholars have argued that the American Founding was not truly a revolution like those in France and later Russia.
Reforms, many thinkers rightly suggest, are gentler than revolution and can still result in positive improvements.
Unfortunately, reform thrives by re-empowering entrenched institutions, systems and even groups that are often more than just a little invested in doing things without change.
Reform tinkers with the edges while leaving the majority of the failing system intact.
Making reforms can certainly bring needed improvements to an organization or society, and sometimes little changes are enough.
The rule of thumb is to avoid revolution unless those things you hold most dear are under attack and clearly threatened, and to rely on reform when the issues and consequences aren’t quite so drastic.
Revolution throws out the good and bad of the past and replaces it with an all new system, while reform leaves the system mostly unchanged but alters certain procedures, institutions or personnel.
There is another option which approaches things very differently, and which can bring major change without the pain of revolution.
This option is Renaissance.
Renaissance is unlike revolution and reform in many ways, but can often deliver the positive results of both.
Renaissance operates from a very different premise than the other two, because it focuses on drastically changing people instead of things.
It changes people from the inside, and then leaves it to them to alter their lives, choices and actions in ways that reform the past and revolutionize and redirect the future.
When societies emphasize progress through revolution or reform, they focus on institutions, laws, policies, funding, credentials, resources, and other manifestations of the physical world.
In contrast, renaissance emphasizes the soul.
When people change their ideas, feelings, goals, dreams, loves, beliefs, passions, ideals, objectives, wishes, relationships and other intangibles, the future is forever impacted.
While these may seem ethereal to some, their impact on history is certainly concrete and momentous.
Two Models
In times of consistent economic growth, plentiful jobs and easy capital, the characteristics of success are often consistency, schooling, training, expertise, steadiness, reliability, obedience, compliance and longevity.
Schools in such environments teach memorization, fitting in, impressing superiors, and excelling within the guidelines, and jobs tend to reward these things.
But when the economy is struggling, jobs are difficult to get and keep, employers are laying off and reducing costs, and/or capital is scarce and minimizing risk, a different set of values dominate.
Traits like capability, skill, ability, initiative, resiliency, optimism, inventiveness, ingenuity, ability to inspire others, frugality, resourcefulness, tenacity and especially enterprise are most valued by the economy.
Schools and parents in such times need to help students increase creativity, imagination, originality, individuality, mental agility, emotional resolve, innovation, risk and entrepreneurialism.
We have been in a general growth period for nearly fifty years, and we are now in a struggling economic era, so the values are in transition from the first list to the second.
Parents and grandparents are still likely to dispense advice from the old economy, emphasizing things like test-taking, credentials and impressing superiors over the new economic realities such as initiative, individuality, originality and entrepreneurialism.
The government is stuck in the same rut, trying and failing to fix major societal challenges with trivial, albeit expensive, reforms.
Where they do attempt to make huge changes, such as in health care and financial reform, their symbolic and revolutionary-style agendas are creating more anger, frustration and deficits than actual solutions.
Tea Party responses further fuel the revolutionary rhetoric in the media and on Capitol Hill–but things remain mostly unchanged.
This lingering “business as usual” in Washington is alarming in a society with significant problems and major challenges in many fields of life.
From the obvious economic problems to unending international quagmires in Afghanistan (now the longest war in American history), Iraq and a number of other places, to a decaying infrastructure of roads and bridges, rising health care costs (unsolved and further complicated by the new health care law), decreasingly effective schools, high unemployment, unsolved levels of crime, and so on, we need real leadership and solutions that actually remedy our national problems.
Revolution is not the answer.
There is much that is good in America, and we want to surgically solve our problems without undoing the many positive things we have built into our society.
But the reform mentality isn’t working either, and the problems have been piling up for over a decade.
We need to drastically improve society, deliver solutions to overcome our most pressing problems, and simultaneously maintain the things which are already working.
Despite the attachment of both political parties and nearly all of our major public and private institutions to reform thinking, we need something much more effective.
We need change from within, a drastic alteration of attitudes and goals and thinking across our nation.
We need people to imagine a better future, to really believe in the reality of what we can do, and to take action.
We don’t need more stirring speeches from the President or any other leader so much as we need millions of individual Americans to get work–alone and in small groups–on solving our problems.
In short, we need a renaissance. And we need it soon.
The Power to Change
Fortunately, the greatest power in all of this may simply be individuals taking action and parents discussing the new values (initiative, ingenuity, tenacity, entrepreneurialism, and so forth) with their children and youth.
In fact, the American spirit of resourcefulness, optimism and enterprise is alive and well. More of us just need to take the leap.
The difficulty, of course, is that the old values were against risk.
In the old economy, the one that dominated from 1945 to 2008, risk was scary and often unrewarding.
A lot of people made small to large fortunes in entrepreneurial ventures, small businesses, network and multilevel marketing, and other non-traditional enterprises, but a lot more lost money in such attempts and ended up dependent on jobs like nearly everyone else.
The lesson for many people was just to get a decent education, a regular job, and a secure benefits package.
Like in Defoe’s classic Robinson Crusoe, many parents shared the advice not to aim too high or too low, but just to be content with “the middle station” in life.
A decent house, two cars, cable television, a good grill and a family membership at the local rec center — these were the dreams of two generations of Americans.
Robert Kiyosaki develops this theme in various interesting dialogues in the best-selling Rich Dad, Poor Dad (affiliate link).
But in the new economy, such a course is likely to create permanent economic struggles in your life. In this economic environment, without risk few people get ahead.
Entrepreneurial thinking, originality and initiative are the new credentials.
Tenacity, ingenuity and enterprise are the new job security.
This is true even among much of the traditionally employed population. The stakes are higher now and success is more difficult across the board, and thinkers, leaders and innovators are needed.
Early Adapters
But how to get the population on board with the new values? Most of us were raised, educated and lived our careers in the old economy, and shifting to the new realities is proving troublesome.
If the Great Recession is just a blip in history and the days of easy credit and consistent growth return for a decade or more, people will justify this refusal to transition their thinking.
But if, as all indications and evidence seem to suggest, the times of high unemployment, a difficult growth environment and a sputtering economy are here to stay for a while, we are kidding ourselves and hurting our futures by refusing to adapt.
No policy, institutional plan or governmental debate is likely to shift the national mentality from employee thinking to entrepreneurial values.
A renaissance is needed. Our vision must change, and our dreams must imagine the great opportunities available in the new realities of the future economy.
We must, as a people, engage a massive migration toward the new economy.
We can lead the economies of the world, but we have to embrace the new reality and get to work. Until a mental renaissance occurs, we are stuck in a rut of old thinking.
Of course, even if the majority refuses to move forward in this new world, each of us can make these changes and get started on our own journey.
In fact, those who get started first are more likely to benefit and profit than the latecomers. This is true in any nearly any industry and endeavor. The early bird gets the worm.
And, as the early adapters get to work, it is empowering to those who are waiting for validation or credibility to justify the risk so they can get on board as well.
There are already a few who are pioneering and building in the new economy. For example, the “downshifter” trend took successful people from the coasts to small towns to build an entrepreneurial new economy starting in the late nineties.
Likewise, homeschooling and the organic foods movements addressed problems in education and health care using new economy thinking long before the 2008 economic meltdown.
Both continue to grow as the rest of the economy unsuccessfully grasps for solutions. Indeed, few whole foodists were (or are) too concerned about health care reforms–because they are, simply, healthy.
Participatory religion continues to grow, as the old-line religions dependent on Priests and Professionals watch their numbers dwindle.
Public schools and teacher unions are increasingly concerned with the growth of charter and other non-traditional educational offerings, and the rise of for-profit career colleges has the old educational bureaucracy hiring lobbyists and badmouthing these “upstart” competitors.
With just one of these schools, The University of Phoenix, quickly becoming the largest university in the world, the old system sees its monopoly fading.
There is a shortage of new economy thinking because the whole nation needs to make the shift, but there are numerous examples of leaders and groups making the transition.
Indeed, literally thousands of online “tribes” are slowly moving (and many are going more quickly) in the right direction.
A few guidelines for transition to the new economy and values include:
- Start young, or if you are older, help the young get started
- Don’t seek to impress the old elite, but rather go after real results
- Get past the old value of not taking risks
- Be experimental, not limited by old systems, methods or models
- Don’t be limited by old obstacles like office space or business cards
- Don’t get stuck on hierarchies, titles and power struggles
- Think virtual, tribal and international
- Be inclusive, open and interconnected
- Be mindful of the way information grows
Conclusion
In the Information Age, revolution would cause as many problems as it might possibly fix, and reform has proven too feeble to really bring necessary change.
We need a massive internal renaissance of the great explorer, frontier, pioneering, and entrepreneuring values which took Pilgrims to the Mayflower, 49’rs to the plains, and led generations of Americans to build the businesses, families, schools, churches, and communities that made our nation great.
We need to accept that we live in a new economy and embrace the new values which bring success in our new environment.
Chief among these are initiative, cheerfulness, persistence, and an enterprising mentality. We need to engage the powerful flow of information in this age, and help it spread and lift the plight of peoples worldwide.
Each of us has a vital role helping the future emerge, and it is time to take the leap and get to work on those things we have always felt we should do.
Or, if we are already hard at work doing our part, it would be well to smile, laugh more often, and give our full attention to watching a sunset or contemplating a tide as it comes in.
It is time for a renaissance, and if the whole nation doesn’t lead out, each of us can embrace it anyway.
Above all, it’s time to take a deep breath, exhale any doubts, and sit down with our youth and share our vision of the new world and the renaissance ahead.
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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 &Government &History &Information Age &Leadership
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
How Information Grows
October 12th, 2010 // 4:00 am @ Oliver DeMille
Information grows differently than industry or agriculture.
Thus hundreds of years of understanding about how to grow Industrial-Age businesses doesn’t really apply to many Information Age endeavors.
Indeed, some of the lessons of how to grow a farm in the Agricultural Age didn’t necessarily translate to Industrial Age corporate growth, although some did.
The key is to think in a new context and apply lessons within the contemporary environment.
Information, and by extension Information-Age organizations and ideas, grow in a certain way.
Instead of the Industrial model of building a foundation, then adding walls, buttresses and finally a roof, informational models grow like waves.
Imagine the ripples caused when a pebble falls into a lake. The waves repeat many times, spreading out and impacting the world around them. Eventually they dissipate and disappear, leaving the world altered, if only a little. Additional pebbles are needed to repeat the process.
And unlike the Industrial Age penchant for building institutions that last forever, information impacts the world and then moves on to something else when enough ripples have accomplished the goal.
The Industrial modus operandi was to build an institution to achieve a goal, and then to focus on the survival and growth of the institution — even if this required abandoning the original purpose for which the institution was established.
In contrast, information sets out to inform, keeps going until this is accomplished, and then moves on to other agendas.
Likewise, where Industrial institutions attempt to control how their work is perceived and utilized, information shares, informs, and leaves (and trusts) those who receive the information to use it as needed and to pass it on.
Good information is naturally improved by various applications, and it is perpetuated by those who receive and utilize it.
There are eight levels of informational waves:
1: At first, information simply is. It exists.
It is in the state and process of being. This is the most important level of informational ideas, institutions and thinkers.
The quality, breadth, depth and wisdom of information matters. Getting it right (right from the beginning) is vital.
Even more important is sharing information for the right reason. If information is shared for the wrong reasons, for example, the information itself is tainted and changed by this fact.
In the Industrial Age, things were considered good information if they were true, but information has a higher standard. Unless informational ideas are shared for the right reasons, the information isn’t reliable.
In short, the first level of information is purity.
Any item of information is a thing, and it has a purpose. In sharing information or building informational institutions or relationships, pure reasons are essential. Without them, the information itself is unreliable.
Note that pure information is one of the most powerful things in the world. It has been called “the power of the word,” “the power of an idea whose time has come,” “resonance,” and a number of other things.
When information is shared by the right person at the right time for the right reasons, it has great and lasting power.
2: Good information that is promoted and shared for the right reasons becomes an interactive wave.
This greatly increases the impact and influence of the information, spreading it to those who need it.
Of course, bad information passed on for the wrong reasons is also interactive and therefore very destructive. Anybody who has ever started a rumor, for example, has probably witnessed how quickly it spreads and how much pain and hurt it can cause.
In the long term, however, tainted information has no lasting power. Information promoters do best when they send out ideas far and wide, openly sharing and personally applying the “new” information they have learned.
3: Next comes the communicative wave.
This occurs where people purposely set out to communicate information to set groups or to everyone.
This wave can be marketed, spun, or twisted for the benefit of various groups and people, but the pure information will shine through and those seeking wisdom will see through the shades of spin and opinion and resonate with what they need to learn.
They will then naturally pass on their contributions and lessons learned and the value of the information will increase.
Synergy kicks in at this point and the value of the information spirals out to many who are seeking it.
4: A linear wave captures much of the information at this level and translates it to specific uses, fields, disciplines, written or spoken or digitized venues and delivers its essence in numerous formats.
Information institutions or thinkers frequently introduce their views to the world in this format. Of course, it existed before they composed, organized or created their specific work, but their creation adds value, quality and even wisdom to the information.
By its nature, information spreads, and those who add to its value without trying to enslave its essence help it spread and increase its ability to serve.
Those who try to control it, in contrast, find that their creation is devalued, their creativity stifled, and their flow of additional information violated.
Unlike land or capital in the Agrarian and Industrial eras, respectively, information is not meant to be owned. The wave of open source programs and wiki media applications harnesses this abundant and cooperative mentality.
Note that I am not arguing here for uncompensated use of copyrighted software, technology, artistic or other proprietary creations.
I believe that original inventions, innovations and creations should benefit those who risked, invested, worked and created. And organizations and governments have every right to keep certain things secret or proprietary.
But pure information in ideas, principles and the flow of wisdom is not the same as one’s proprietary creation–nobody can (or should) lock up or control the flow of pure information.
As long as individuals and institutions own their creation, but without trying to control thought and inspiration, it can benefit them and many others.
5: Eventually information is captured in numerous linear waves which together form a multimedia wave.
In other words, at a certain point pure information is simultaneously delivered in many forms and from numerous sources which reinforce the messages, lessons and value of the original information.
Leaders can help spread this wave by delivering the information multiple times and in manifold ways.
6: The next step occurs when information comes alive.
This happens were the essence of the information is felt.
When I hear a story and it spurs an emotional response, for example, all the earlier waves combine and impact how I receive the information.
In a similar way, waves far from where the pebble dropped are bigger and carry a lot more water than those right where the pebble fell.
A similar level in Industrial institutions was branding–where a given brand, name or logo carried a repeating emotional charge. In the informational world, however, each additional interaction communicates new information value.
7: Psychological waves come next, and are produced by the transfer of information from one mind to another.
Since all such transfers partake of all the earlier levels of waves (e.g. the person shares his feelings, pure or tainted reasons, multimedia use of voice along with facial expressions and nonverbal cues, etc.), learning from others is an advanced way to receive information.
Because of this, the level of advancement of the person delivering the message has some impact on how the information is delivered.
Still, the condition of the receiver is the most important factor in determining the quality of the reception when the information or signal is pure.
In Industrial marketing this was often dominated by testimonials or infomonials, but informational leaders simply open up and share.
The most powerful of this information often comes from word of mouth, personal stories, and genuine interest in helping others.
Any who truly care about others and share ideas, thoughts or anything else as attempts to help others are partners with information in this process.
The true language of this wave is love, which is why true change most often comes when we feel love or loved.
8: At the highest level, the symbolic wave conveys a packet of information that is amazingly multi-layered and teeming with depth, breadth, context, connections and possibilities.
Shakespeare spoke of being bounded in a nutshell of infinite space and science teaches that the DNA code of an entire organism is found in each cell.
The symbolic wave could be called a mustard seed, a small token carrying the potential and key to so much more.
Also, at this highest level, the receiver can often break the information into smaller pieces, analyze each of the waves alone or together, and consider each facet of the idea–from its essence to all its potential consequences.
The possibilities are exponential. The information at this level is only limited by the abilities of the user to consider, discover or imagine.
Those seeking such information are on a quest for inspiration–be it limited to one question, or as broad as a life of searching.
Because the symbolic wave of information is so powerful, those who ask shall receive; the universe is friendly, and when the student is ready the teacher will appear.
(That last paragraph makes me want to be sure everyone knows how important it is to read Free the Beagle by Roy Williams. It’s a fun read, not homework.)
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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 : Current Events &Economics &Education &Information Age &Leadership
