Liberty

The Party System’s Newest Flaw

August 6th, 2011 // 10:08 am @ Oliver DeMille

Ungovernable

I recently watched a televised debate on whether America’s two-party system is making our nation ungovernable.

During the debate, New York Times columnist David Brooks said something fascinating.

He mentioned that political scientists keep track of how much cooperation there is between the two parties in Congress, and that while there have been periods of major party fighting such as the 1860s and 1960s, we are at an all-time low in partisan cooperation to get deals done.

Then he noted that the major difference in our current party system is that always before each party included a wide variety of viewpoints.

Within the same tent of the Democratic Party, for instance, many views and policies were suggested, debated and decided.

The same diversity existed within the Republican Party.

Today, however, this is not the case—at least not when it comes to policy proposals.

“The problem is that each party has become more rigid in my own lifetime of covering this,” he said. “When I came to Washington in the early 1980s, I could go to back ventures like Jack Kemp or Newt Gingrich on the Republican side. They had all these weird ideas they were trying to push on leadership. That doesn’t happen [anymore]—the leaders control everything now. The nature of the parties has changed.”

In their drive to win, the party leaders have organized around single, central themes and strongly demanded that congressmen stay within the accepted partisan bounds on nearly all topics.

Most of our elected officials are reasonable and dedicated, and if we put a group of them in a room without party labels and the goal of solving a given issue—say debt, deficits, immigration, or health care—they would almost certainly be able to propose sensible and plausible solutions in a relatively short time.

But attach a party label to each person in the room, especially with the historical baggage now attached to the parties, and the cost, timeline and likelihood of success would suddenly and permanently change.

This is a serious problem for modern America.

Racism of Red and Blue

Calling someone a Democrat or a Republican today is fraught with danger—they may well take offense.

I once watched a man stand at a public meeting and make a suggestion on how to solve the problem before the group.

The officials at the front of the room asked him several questions, and he answered them with common sense and a clear understanding of the situation.

A few members of the audience stood to add their support and small suggestions to improve his idea.

The room was moving toward consensus, when another participant asked if the speaker was a Republican.

When he answered that he was a registered Democrat, the mood in the room changed.

A few argued with him (making the point that they were Republicans, which literally had nothing to do with the topic at hand).

This fueled anger among Democrats and within minutes the room was deeply divided.

The official running the meeting took the floor and pointed out to everyone that the man’s idea had been almost universally supported before his political affiliation was mentioned, and tried to get the group back to discussing the merits of the idea.

But it was too late: the Republicans in the room now disliked his idea and the Democrats supported it.

Many had to change their minds to get to this point, but it seems that was easy once they knew which party he belonged to.

This kind of divisiveness is all too common.

Even online, many, perhaps most, American citizens who engage in political conversation limit themselves to groups where the other people agree with their views.

Few discussions on political topics are inclusive or open to learning from diverse perspectives.

Squabbles and Solutions

Fortunately, the solution to this starts at the ground level.

Each of us can listen to the views of people who disagree with us on politics.

I don’t know when the idea that discussing politics is impolite came into vogue, but it has only hurt our freedom and prosperity.

Right now, today, we can learn from other political views, not to debunk them immediately and angrily like most people do, but rather to really understand their point.

This is not the same as forgetting one’s beliefs—it is in fact the opposite process of strengthening one’s most important beliefs by increasing your understanding of the world.

A move to a European-style multiparty system is not the answer, since this would create a structure where the winner still runs the whole government but is usually a lot more extreme than moderate.

Ideally, America could adopt a non-partisan model like that suggested by many of the American framers.

The Constitution is actually designed for a nonparty system.

In the absence of a major shift to a nonpartisan model, the best reform to our system would be for more American citizens to ignore party spin and think independently—and openly listen to and learn from others who do the same, even if they disagree with your ideas.

We all have more to learn, and in fact significant political learning is more likely when we are listening to those whose views differ from the thoughts we’ve already had.

New ideas spark increased thinking, even when you disagree with the details.

Of course, people shouldn’t simply accept ideas they find problematic or wrong, but free citizens need to be good listeners and open-minded thinkers.

Such maturity is needed in any free society, and especially in one where ideological political parties dominate the discussion.

Our leaders, deeply mired in partisan squabbles, are unlikely to make this change, so it is up to regular Americans to take the lead in discussing and promoting needed solutions for many of our biggest challenges.

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Oliver DeMille is a co-founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of Thomas Jefferson Education.

He is the co-author of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestseller LeaderShift, and author of A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the 21st Century, and The Coming Aristocracy: Education & the Future of Freedom.

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

Category : Blog &Citizenship &Constitution &Culture &Featured &Government &Leadership &Liberty &Politics

Our Government Isn’t Broken

August 1st, 2011 // 10:22 am @ Oliver DeMille

The Third Party Solution

Our government isn’t broken.

It is just caught in the past.

Specifically, the current divide between the parties is a mirror image of the country.

Politics is a reflection of society, and the bickering right now in Washington is a direct projection of the nation.

There is one big exception.

The nation is divided into three major political camps.

The problem is that the two smallest camps (Democrats and Republicans) have party representation in Washington while the largest camp (independents) does not.

In short, it’s not that our government is broken, but rather that we are stuck in a twentieth-century structural model even though the society has fundamentally changed.

Instead of a two-party nation sending its representatives to Washington, we now have a three-party society where the biggest “party” must divide its representation between the two smaller parties.

It’s not broken, it just acts like it.

The Great Fall

This situation began to develop when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989.

Up to that point, the two-party model was a natural reflection of a nation engaged in a long-term Cold War with an enemy capable of destroying our entire civilization.

This omnipresent reality colored all policy for over four decades.

Having sacrificed greatly to overcome major conflicts in WWI and WWII, the large majority of citizens from both parties stood firmly together against the Soviet threat.

When the Cold War menace significantly decreased, Americans took a long sigh of relief, and then they reassessed their priorities for government.

Some felt that the needs of big business were the top priority, others considered moral issues the lead concern, while still others deemed an increase in social justice the major challenge.

The first two pooled resources in the Republican Party, while social liberals and those emphasizing social justice combined in the Democratic Party.

The largest group of Americans rejected both of these extremes, feeling that government should indeed fulfill its role to corporations, societal values, and social justice, but also to a number of other vital priorities including national security, education, and fiscal responsibility.

But, because independents come from many viewpoints and also because they have no official party apparatus in Washington, the biggest political group in our nation today has little direct political power except during elections.

The consequence is that subsequent elections tend to sway widely in opposite directions.

When independents put Republicans in power, they are naturally (because they are not Republicans) frustrated with how the Republicans use that power.

When, in contrast, they vote for Democrats, they find themselves discouraged with what Democrats do in office.

This is a structural problem.

When Democrats elect a Democrat, the elected official can swing to the center once in office because while supporters may dislike their Democratic official’s actions they will almost always still vote for him/her in the next election—after all, in their view the Republican would be worse.

The same applies to Republicans electing a Republican.

All of this changes when independents put a Democrat, or a Republican, in office. Naturally, the elected official will disappoint supporters in some way, and independents are as likely as not to believe that a candidate from the other party will do better.

Historical Realignments

When similar historical realignments of politics with cultural shifts have occurred, a major new political group in society reformed one of the big parties to fit its new views.

For example, when the Declaration of Independence and hostilities with Britain changed the old Tory versus Whig debate, the Loyalists mostly joined the new Federalists while the Whigs split between the Federalists and Anti-Federalists.

When the new U.S. Constitution changed the makeup of society and made the Federalist versus Anti-Federalist debate obsolete, most of the Anti-Federalists joined the Jeffersonian Democratic Republicans while the Federalists split between the Democratic Republicans and the Federalists.

Other such changes have happened several times in American history, most notably in the 1830s, 1850s, 1910s, 1930s and 1960s.

Note that in the twentieth-century shifts the names of the parties (Democrat and Republican) did not change even though political philosophies were significantly altered during these periods of realignment.

The current repositioning may or may not adopt a new name for one of the parties, but a philosophical shift is occurring nonetheless.

Some believe that this shift is fundamentally rooted in social concerns, from issues of gender and sexual preference to values debates and immigration.

But this is a view left over from the twentieth-century style Democrat-Republican argument.

The rise of independents is not a morality-driven movement.

It’s mostly about the economy.

The New Party

The new party of the twenty-first century will emphasize economic growth and getting our financial house in order.

Many independents will flock to this party, whatever its name—Democratic, Republican, or something else.

This is the party of the future.

And while analysts say that independents are not joiners, it is likely that many would join such a party.

Note that a real three-party system is not likely to last.

A third party may arise, as Thomas L. Friedman and others have suggested, but history suggests that t will eventually take the place of one of the top two parties.

There is an important reason for this.

The American framers did not want the U.S. President to be elected by a plurality of the nation, so they wisely structured the Electoral College in a way that the President can only be elected by a majority of electoral votes.

This means that any third party will eventually have to gain the support of one of the other parties in order to win the White House.

This constitutional reality is one of the most important things keeping America strong.

Without it, any extreme party might win a given election and take the nation in even more drastic directions than we’ve witnessed to date.

To sum it up, the frustration with two-party infighting is a positive thing.

The framers rightly foresaw that the greatest danger to America would be an apathetic citizenry, and the Electoral College requirement for majority has caused a no-party or two-party structure and also incentivized citizens to stay informed and involved.

When a powerful third party arises in America, it has always come in response to a change in society and it has always worked to reform the two existing parties in ways that better reflected the desires of the people.

This is a huge positive, as chaotic as it may seem at times.

Seriously?

Today, it is independents that most dislike the party bickering, and as a result independents are more actively involved in government.

This is a powerful check on the aristocratic-political class, and shows once again the brilliance and inspired effectiveness of the U.S. Constitution as established by the framers.

Our government isn’t broken, but the current two-party system is outdated.

Neither party truly represents the views of the largest political “group” in America—independents.

Until this problem is fixed, the entire political system will look untenable and appear unable to solve major American problems.

But such realignment is already occurring, albeit slowly, and the future belongs to whichever party—Democrat, Republican or a third party—gets serious about three things:

A moderate view that government has an important role to play in society and that it must also be limited to the things it really should do like national security, schools and basic social justice
Actually getting our financial house in order
Creating the environment for widespread enterprise and a true growth economy

The party that effectively and consistently champions these things will be the leading political group in the years ahead.

In other words, some major shifts in the parties are ahead.

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Oliver DeMille is a co-founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of Thomas Jefferson Education.

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

Category : Blog &Citizenship &Constitution &Current Events &Featured &Government &Independents &Leadership &Liberty &Politics &Statesmanship

Freedom in Decline and the Missing Metaphor

July 6th, 2011 // 9:40 am @ Oliver DeMille

One reason freedom is threatened with serious decline in our time is that metaphor is often missing among those who love liberty.

Our modern educational system has taught most of us to focus on the literal, to separate the fields of knowledge, to learn topics as if they are fundamentally detached from each other, and to build areas of expertise and career around disconnected specialties.

We are even encouraged to separate the various parts of our life—not only math class from English class or gym from history, but also school from family, work from private lives, spouse from child relationships, family from friend relationships, religion from politics, career from entertainment.

Most children and parents leave home in the morning to spend time at school, work and other separate activities—ultimately spending less time with each other than with people outside the family. Anything less than such separation of the various parts of our lives is considered unhealthy by many experts.

Thus it is not surprising that the use of metaphor is often missed in our modern world. We seem to be a nation of literalists now. We understand allegory, comparison, contrast, simile and even imagery, as long as the comparisons are patently apparent or clearly spelled out. Metaphor?—not so much.

There are many exceptions to this, of course, but such literalism is increasingly the norm. Symbol is and will always be important, but the artistic, understated, abstract and poetic is out of vogue in many circles that promote freedom.

Stay Out of Politics

Consider, for example, the way some conservative radio talk-show hosts rant against Hollywood actors or best-selling singers speaking out on political themes. The argument in such cases usually centers on the idea that actors/performers have no business opining on political topics—that, in fact, they know little about such things and should stick to their areas of expertise.

At one level, this assumes that the actors’ roles as citizens are trumped by their careers. Ironically, such talk-show hosts usually give great credence to the voices of regular citizens as part of their daily fare—as long as the citizens tend to agree with the host. Likewise, such hosts frequently seek credibility by bringing like-minded celebrities to their show. Note that this is a favorite tact of media in general—television as well as radio, liberal as well as conservative.

At another level, the idea that actors or other artists are simply entertainers rather than vitally important social commentators misses the deep reality of the historical role of art. Artists are as important to social-political-economic commentary as journalists, scientists, the professorate, clergymen, economists, the political parties or other public policy professionals.

Napoleon is sometimes credited with saying that if he could control the music or story-telling of the nation he would happily let the rest of the media print what it wanted: “A picture is worth a thousand words.” (Or more literally, “a good sketch is better than a long speech.”)

Those who think artists are, or should be, irrelevant to the Great Conversation might consider such artists as Harriet Beecher Stowe, Nietzsche, Goya, Picasso, Goethe, Ayn Rand, C.S. Lewis or George Orwell. Can one really argue that Ronald Reagan, Charleston Heston, Tina Fey, Jon Stewart, Aaron Sorkin or the writers of Law and Order have had only a minor impact on society and government?

Artists should have a say on governance–first because all citizens should have a say, and second because the fundamental role of the artist is not to entertain (this is a secondary goal) but to use art to comment on society and seek to improve it where possible. The problem with celebrity, some would argue, is that many times the public gives more credence to artists than to others who really do understand an issue better. This is a legitimate argument, but it tends to support media types rather than the citizenry.

Early American Art

On an even deeper level, art is not just the arena of artists. Tocqueville found it interesting that in early America there were few celebrity artists– but that most of the citizens personally took part in artistic endeavors and tended to think artistically.

Another way to say this is that they thought metaphorically in the broad sense:

They clearly saw the connections between fields of knowledge and the application of ideas in one arena to many others
They understood the interrelations of disparate ideas without having to literally spell things out
They immediately applied the stories and lessons of history, art and literature to current challenges

Another major characteristic Tocqueville noted in early American culture was its entrepreneurial spirit, initiative, ingenuity and widespread leadership—especially in the colonial North and West, but not nearly so much in the brutal, aristocratic, slave-culture South of the 1830s.

Freedom and entrepreneurialism are natural allies, as are creative, metaphorical thinking and effective initiative and wise risk-taking.

I’ve already written about the great on-going modern battle between innovation and conformity (“The Clash of Two Cultures”), which could be called metaphorical thinking versus rote literalism:

In far too many cases, we kill the human spirit with rules of bureaucratic conformity and then lament the lack of creativity, innovation, initiative and growth. We are angry with companies which take jobs abroad, but refuse to become the kind of employees that would guarantee their stay. We beg our political leaders to fix things, but don’t take initiative to build enough entrepreneurial solutions that are profitable and impactful.

The future belongs to those who buck these trends. These are the innovators, the entrepreneurs, the creators, what Chris Brady has called the Rascals. We need more of them. Of course, not every innovation works and not every entrepreneur succeeds, but without more of them our society will surely decline. Listening to some politicians in Washington, from both parties, it would appear we are on the verge of a new era of conformity: “Better regulations will fix everything,” they affirm.

The opposite is true. Unless we create and embrace a new era of innovation, we will watch American power decline along with numbers of people employed and the prosperity of our middle and lower classes. So next time your son, daughter, employee or colleague comes to you with an exciting idea or innovation, bite your tongue before you snap them back to conformity.

Innovation vs. Conformity

Metaphor gets to the root of this war between innovation and conformity. The habit of thinking in creative, new and imaginative ways is central to being inventive, resourceful and innovative.

Note that all of these words are synonyms of “productive” and ultimately of “progressive.” If we want progress, we must have innovation, and innovation requires imagination. Few things spark creativity, imagination or inspiration like metaphor.

If we want to see a significant increase in freedom in the long term, we’ll first need to witness a resurrection of metaphorical thinking. This is one reason the great classics are vital to the education of free people. The classics were mostly written by authors who read widely and thought deeply about many topics, and even more importantly most readers of classics study beyond narrow academic divisions of knowledge and apply ideas across the board.

In contrast, modern movie and television watchers, fantasy novel or technical manual readers, and internet surfers don’t tend to routinely correlate the messages of entertainment into their daily careers. There are certainly deep, profound, classic-worthy ideas in our contemporary movies, novels, and online. But only a few of the customers watch, read or surf in the classic way—consistently seeking lessons and wisdom to be applied to serious personal and world challenges.

Only a few moderns end each day’s activities with correspondence and debate about the movies, books and websites they’ve experienced with other deep-thinking readers who have “studied” the same sources. Facebook can be used in this way, but it seldom is.

Alvin Toffler called this the “Information Age” rather than the Wisdom Age for this reason—we have so much information at our fingertips, but too little wise discussion of applicable ideas. As Allan Bloom put it in The Closing of the American Mind, people don’t think together as much they used to. Even formal students in most classes engage less in open dialogue and debate than in passive note-taking and solitary memorizing.

Leadership Thinking

All of this is connected with the decline of metaphorical thinking. The point of education in the old Oxford model of learning (read great classics, discuss the great works with tutors who have read them many times and also with other students who are new to the books, show your proficiency in creative thinking in front of oral boards of questioners) was to teach deep, broad, effective metaphorical thinking.

Such skills could accurately be called leadership thinking, and generations of Americans followed the same model (until the late 1930s) of reading and deeply discussing the greatest works of mankind in all fields of knowledge. Note that thinking in metaphor naturally includes literal thinking– but not vice versa.

This style of learning centered on the student’s ability to see through the literal and understand all the potential hidden, deeper, abstract, correlated and metaphorical meanings in things. Such education trained people to think through—and see through—the promises, policies and proposals of their elected officials, expert economists, and other specialists, and to make the final decisions as a wise electorate not prone to fads, media spin or partisan propaganda.

A New Monument

As a society understands metaphor, it understands politics. This is a truism worth chiseling into marble. When the upper class understands metaphor while the masses require literality, freedom declines.

The surest way to understand metaphor is to read literature and history and think about it deeply, especially about how it applies to modern realities (which is why classrooms were once dedicated to discussion about important books, as mentioned above).

This is why the university phrase “I majored in literature, science, or history” is a middle-class expression while the upper class prefers to say, “I read literature, science, or history at X University.”

The differences here are striking: the upper class never believes it has actually “majored” a topic, while the middle class can seldom claim to have seriously “read” all the great works in any important academic field.

This fundamental difference in education remains a cause of the widening gap between upper and middle class. Indeed, education is a major determining factor of the contemporary (and historical) class divide. It is the ability to think metaphorically (to in fact consider everything both literally and metaphorically) and to automatically seek out and consider the various potential meanings of all things, that most separates the culture of the “haves” from the global “have-nots.”

The Ideology Barrier

In politics, the far left and far right—including, most notably right now, the environmental movement and the tea parties—significantly limit their own growth by staying too literal.

This comes across to most Americans as ineffectively rigid, intolerant, naïve, and even ideological.

The fact that most environmentalists and tea partiers are genuinely passionate and sincere is not a plus in the eyes of many people as long as such activists are seen to be humorless and even angry.

Such activists may not in fact be humorless and angry, but when they seem to be these things, they diminish their ability to build rapport with anyone that does not already understand their point of view.

Feminism once carried these same negatives, but recently gained more mainstream understanding once feminist thinkers moved past literality and used art and entertainment to gain positive support. The gay-lesbian community made the same transition in the past two decades, and environmentalism is starting to make this shift as well (witness the recent hubbub over Cars III).

Whether you agree or disagree with these political movements is not the point; they gain mainstream support by portraying themselves as relaxed, happy, caring and likeable people, and by sharing their principles by telling a story.

False Starts, or, Failed Expectations

President Bush attempted to effect such a change in the Republican Party with his emphasis on Compassionate Conservatism, but this theme disappeared after 9/11.

President Obama exuded this relaxed optimism through the 2008 campaign and several months into his presidency, becoming a symbol of change and leadership to America’s youth (who hadn’t had a real political hero since Ronald Reagan). The president’s cult-hero status disappeared when the Obama Administration’s literality (not liberality) was eventually interpreted as robotic, smug and even defensive.

The White House’s big-spending agenda in 2009-2010, coming on the heels of over seven years of Republican-led overspending, sparked a tea party revolt. It also drove most independents to the right, not because they supported right-wing policies but rather because independents tend to understand metaphor: they saw that the Obama agenda was primarily about bigger government and only secondarily about real change.

To put this as literally as possible, President Obama desired lasting change in Washington, but he cared even more about certain policies which required massive government spending.

There are true supporters of real freedom on all sides of the political table: Democratic, Republican, independent, blue, red, green, tea party, etc. They would all do well to spread deep, quality, creative, artistic and metaphorical thinking in our society.

As Lord Brougham taught:

“Education makes a people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern, but impossible to enslave.”

He was speaking not of modern specialized job training but of reading the greatest books of mankind. Leaders are readers, and so are free nations.

Symbolism, Nuance and the Deficits of Literalism

As long as metaphor is missing in our dialogue—not to mention much in our prevailing educational offerings—the people will be continually frustrated by their political leaders.

Campaigns succeed through symbolism, especially metaphor, while daily governance naturally requires a major dose of literalism. Sometimes a significant crisis swings the nation into a period of metaphor, but this mood seldom lasts much longer than the crisis itself.

The most effective leaders (e.g. Washington, Jackson, Lincoln, the Roosevelts and Reagan) are able to communicate a metaphor of American grand purpose even while they govern literally. For example, the Jeffersonian “era” lasted for decades beyond his term of office, building on the American mind captured by the metaphor of freedom; John Adams’ literalism hardly carried him through his one term.

While some of this is the responsibility of the leader, it is ultimately the duty of the people to think in metaphor and understand the big themes and hidden nuances behind government proposals and policies.

In this regard, groups such as environmentalists and tea parties seem to really understand the major trends and are courageously making their voice heard. Unfortunately for their goals, they have yet to effectively present their messages using metaphor. People tend to see them, as mentioned above, as humorless, angry and ideologically rigid.

The irony is rich, because most Americans actually support both a higher level of environmental consciousness and a major increase of government fiscal responsibility. In literal terms, many Americans agree with a large number of green and tea party proposals even as they say they dislike the “environmentalists” and the “tea parties.”

Again, the problem is that these groups tend to emphasize only the literal.

Such examples may be interesting, but the real problem for the future of American freedom is a populace that doesn’t naturally think through everything in a metaphorical way.

A free society only stays as free—and as prosperous—as its electorate allows.

When a nation has been educated to separate its thinking, it tends to be easily swayed by an upper class that understands and uses metaphor—in politics, economics, marketing, media, and numerous walks of life. It becomes subtly enslaved to experts, because, quite simply, it believes what the experts say.

Alternate Timeline of Literalism

If the American founding generation had so believed the experts, it would have stuck with Britain, would never have bothered reading the Federalist Papers, and would have left governance to the upper class.

The capitol would probably be New York City, and the middle class would have remained small. We would be a more aristocratic society, with an entirely different set of laws for the wealthy than the rest.

Such forays into theoretical history are hardly provable, but one thing is clear: American greatness is soundly based on a citizenry that thought independently, creatively, innovatively and metaphorically. The educational system encouraged such thinking, and adult discourse continued it throughout the citizen’s life.

Great education teaches one to listen to the experts, and to then take one’s own counsel on the important decisions.

Indeed, such education prepares the adult to weigh the words of experts and all other sources of knowledge and then to choose wisely.

Sit in chair; open book. Read.

Metaphor matters. Metaphorical thinking is vital to freedom. The classics are the richest vein of metaphorical and literal thinking.

Every nation that has maintained real freedom has been a nation of readers—readers of the great books. Freedom is in decline precisely because reading the great classics is in decline. Fortunately, every regular citizen can easily do something to fix this problem.

The books are on our shelves.

For more on this topic, listen to “The Freedom Crisis.”
Click here for details >>

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Oliver DeMille is a co-founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of Thomas Jefferson Education.

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 &Arts &Blog &Culture &Current Events &Education &Featured &Generations &Information Age &Leadership &Liberty &Politics

The American Caste System

July 5th, 2011 // 6:57 am @ Oliver DeMille

The American framers overcame domination by an elite upper class by establishing a new system where every person was treated equally before the law. This led to nearly two centuries of increasing freedoms for all social classes, both genders and all citizens—whatever their race, religion, health, etc.

During the Industrial Age this system changed in at least two major ways.

First, the U.S. commercial code was changed to put limits on who can invest in what. Rather than simply protecting all investors (rich or poor) against fraud or other criminal activity, in the name of “protecting the unsophisticated,” laws were passed that only allow the highest level of the middle class and the upper classes to invest in the investments with the highest returns.

This created a European-style model where only the rich own the most profitable companies and get richer while the middle and lower classes are stuck where they are.

Second, the schools at all levels were reformed to emphasize job training rather than quality leadership education. Today great leadership education is still the staple at many elite private schools, but the middle and lower classes are expected to forego the “luxury” of opportunity-affording, deep leadership education and instead just seek the more “practical” and “relevant” one-size-fits-all job training. This perpetuates the class system.

This is further exacerbated by the reality that public schools in middle class zip-codes typically perform much higher than lower-class neighborhood schools. Private elite schools train most of our future upper class and leaders, middle class public schools train our managerial class and most professionals, and lower-class public schools train our hourly wage workers. Notable exceptions notwithstanding, the rule still is what it is.

Government reinforces the class system by the way it runs public education, and big business supports it through the investment legal code. With these two biggest institutions in society promoting the class divide, lower and middle classes have limited power to change things.

The wooden stake that overcomes the vampire of an inelastic class system is entrepreneurial success. Becoming a producer and successfully creating new value in society helps the entrepreneur surpass the current class-system matrix and also weakens the overall caste system itself.

In short, if America is to turn the Information Age into an era of increased freedom and widespread economic opportunity, we need more producers.

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Oliver DeMille is a co-founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of Thomas Jefferson Education.

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 &Business &Culture &Economics &Entrepreneurship &Featured &Generations &Liberty &Mini-Factories &Mission &Producers &Prosperity

A New Call for Free Enterprise

June 22nd, 2011 // 1:13 pm @ Oliver DeMille

A review of Beyond Capitalism and Socialism: A New Statement of an Old Ideal, edited by Tobias J. Lanz

The message of this excellent book, Beyond Capitalism and Socialism, is straightforward and timely: both socialism and capitalism are lacking. But the book goes a step further, offering suggestions for what type of economy and society we should adopt in the twenty-first century:

“There must be a better way. And, of course, there is, and has been for a very long time. It is a society based on small self-sufficient regions, empowered communities, vibrant neighborhoods, gainfully employed families, individual self-satisfactions, decentralized politics, local economies, sustainable organic agriculture, cooperative work, environmental humility, and careful nurturing of the earth.”

The entire book outlines these basic ideals in a realistic and real-world, even anti-utopian, way.

First, it notes that through history humankind has faced on ongoing series of major crises. These are simply the reality of history. Every generation faces challenges, and some are bigger than others. We have enjoyed a period of relative peace and prosperity which is rare in human history. Crises of some kind will come, and at some point they will challenge or end the ability of big government to solve the world’s problems.

Second, the book argues that truly sustainable society depends on something more than dependence on big institutions:

“As James Kunstler puts it in The Long Emergency, when these [inevitable] crises hit, national and supranational economies will disintegrate and ‘the focus of society will have to return to the town or small city and its surrounding agricultural hinterland…’”

“’It will require us to downscale and rescale virtually everything we do and how we do it…’”

“’Anything organized on the large scale, whether it is government or a corporate business enterprise such as Wal-Mart, will wither as the cheap energy props that support bigness fall away.’”

This is an extremely important point. Towns and cities along with families could, and indeed should, at some point become once again the central institutions of human society. As a society, we have given far too little thought to this eventuality.

Third, if any or all of these changes—or others like them—occur, we will see our world drastically altered. Unfortunately, little of our modern schooling, scholarship, career training or leadership preparation is geared in any way to dealing with such a possibility.

“And then, of necessity, the world will reconstruct itself on the lines of a more human-scale, community-based, local-resource-dependent societies…”

I don’t know if this forecast will come as predicted here, but it certainly could. And if it does, we need leaders who are prepared. In fact, even if this prediction doesn’t occur, such an increase of leadership on local levels could only help our society. Even if our major institutions remain big, even global, strong local leadership is vital to success—economically, politically and on a societal level.

A Breakdown of Local Leadership

In fact, it is the breakdown of exactly this kind of local leadership, I believe, which has caused such drastic growth of institutions that are too big and such widespread dependence on these institutions. Any organization that is too big to fail is, put simply, too big. Period. If it is too big to fail, its failure is a major threat—because all man-made institutions eventually fail. Most do so earlier rather than later.

The authors of Beyond Capitalism and Socialism get it right that the answer to our major current problems are rooted in our citizens and community, and that until we build strong local foundations across society we can only expect to witness further economic decay. They are also correct that neither capitalism nor socialism hold the answers, that a return to true free enterprise is essential, and that we must get started in this process rather than wait for some crisis to force such changes.

At times the authors get caught up in denominational debates from the Catholic perspective, but this tends to deepen the benefit of the book rather than detract. Readers do not have to buy into any religious themes to learn from the numerous commentaries on the potential of free enterprise society.

The book is invaluable reading for American, and all freedom-loving, citizens. As one of the authors wrote:

“Given a society, in which men, or the vast majority of men, owned property and were secure in their income, the myriad interactions of free men making empowered choices really would balance supply and demand. We would be astonished at the variety, the non-servility, and the creativity of our neighbors.”

I am convinced that this is both true and, especially in our modern world, profound. Still, I found the book lacking in one major detail. I prefer the term “free enterprise” to “Distributive,” first because I think it more accurately describes the philosophy for which it stands and second because I’m not convinced that free enterprise and distributism are precisely the same thing. They share many ideals, it is true, but there are differences.

For example, both free enterprise and distributism agree that:

neither capitalism nor socialism is the ideal
capitalism, in which those with wealth are treated differently by the law than those without wealth and the level of one’s wealth determines which laws pertain to each person, is flawed
socialism, in which the government owns the major means of production and levels incomes and work assignments in an attempt to create long-term equity between all citizens and where one’s status is determined by one’s government position, is flawed
the local society, economy and government is more important than the state- or national-level economy and government and should be treated as such
families are the central institution of society, and they are more important than markets or governments; markets and governments exist to help families, not vice versa
money is an important consideration in making choices for family, career, business and society, but it is less of a priority than relationships, spirituality and morality
we have reached a point in the modern world where our societal dependence on big institutions—both government and corporate—is a serious weakness in our culture and causes much that is negative in our world
a return to society that is more ideal, more locally-oriented, and citizens that are more independent and entrepreneurial is overdue. In such a society, most families would own their own businesses rather than remaining dependent on government or corporations for their jobs and livelihoods

Free Enterprise and Distributism

The big difference between free enterprise and distributive thought hinges on how we should move toward such a society. Dale Ahlquist, one of the authors in Beyond Capitalism and Socialism, suggested the following:

“The dilemma of Distributism is the dilemma of freedom itself. Distributism cannot be done to the people, but only by the people. It is not a system that can be imposed from above; it can only spring up from below….If it happens, it seems most likely that it would be ushered in by a popular revolution. In any case, it must be popular. It would at some point require those with massive and inordinate wealth to give it up.”

The desire for popular support is normal for all political groups, but the idea that Distributism “would at some point require those with massive and inordinate wealth to give it up” is alarming at best. Why would the wealthy have to “give it up?” Why is that necessary in free society? The word “required” is the problem. Fortunately, Ahlquist clarifies that this would be voluntary, so it isn’t Marxist, but it still makes me wonder, Why?

Nor is this the isolated view of just one author. Here is how another of the authors put it (and for this author voluntarism is replaced by government force):

“For instance, if I own one or several stores (say pizza restaurants) I would have a reasonable and normal rate of taxation, but as soon as I begin to assemble a chain of such businesses, then my rate of taxation would rise so sharply that no one of a normal disposition would seek to continue to own such a chain….A similar scheme of taxation would attack ‘multiple shops,’ that is, stores selling many lines of goods, such as a mega or ‘box’ stores, and stores with ‘large retail power.’”

Again, the obvious question is, why? The answer is that no big institutions can be allowed, that everything must by force remain small. This makes the same mistake as Marx, who taught that government would take from the rich and redistribute equally to all. The mistake was to think that those running the government wouldn’t keep a little (or a lot) extra for themselves and their families. In the Distributive ideal, where no institution can be allowed to be too big, the clear flaw is that any institution powerful enough to keep all the others small will have to be, well, big.

That means big government. The Distributists would presumably want the government to be local, but strong enough to keep all the other institutions small. The American founders already dealt with this and wrote about it extensively in the Federalist Papers. Madison, for example, said that nearly all of the colonies in the late 1780s suffered from local governments that were too dominant—they nearly all had corrupt and anti-freedom practices. This was one of the strongest arguments in support of the U.S. Constitution: a central entity would help reduce oppressive, intrusive and unfair governing fads which always arise in small (and therefore inbred) governments.

Clearly government has become much too big today, but a return to locales dominated by a few powerful families that ignore the needs of the rest of the people is not the answer—though it is precisely what would happen to most local governments if left to themselves. History is clear on this point.

We certainly need more local leadership, independence and a lot more entrepreneurialism and real ownership. We need good local government to make it work, and ideally a federation of local governments to maintain real freedom.

Is Taxation the Answer?

But back to the main point: Why would we want to use government taxation to keep any business from growing? If it offers a good product at a good price and people prefer its offering to those of other businesses, why should we drastically increase its taxes so that it remains small? Is smallness the central point? If so, this is the reason I prefer free enterprise. One more quote will suffice to further my point:

“Of course, a suitable period of time would be necessary to complete an orderly sell-off of property from excessively large owners to small owners before the new tax system came into full effect. Moreover, if this is instituted at a very reasonable pace, with tax rates on concentrations of property increasing gradually each year, this would give owners more time to prepare and help prevent a ‘firesale’ of their property. Similarly some form of guaranteed loans would have to exist to allow those without property or money to purchase the excess property that was being sold.”

My first thought when I read this was, “Who gets to determine what ‘excess’ means in such a society? Whoever it is, they’ll eventually keep more of the money and power than everyone else.” This one flaw in how the book describes Distributism is a serious problem. It proposes stopping one capitalist from getting too much wealth and power, but it doesn’t seem to realize that it also proposes taking the “excess” money from the capitalist and giving it to the socialist.

In contrast, free enterprise takes a different route. It establishes good laws that treat the rich, middle and poor the same. Period. That is freedom.

Is the U.S. a Free-Enterprise Economy?

Some people may believe that this is the system we live under in the United States today. Such an assumption is incorrect. The U.S. commercial code has numerous laws which are written specifically to treat people differently based on their wealth.

For example, it is illegal for those with less than a certain amount of wealth to be offered many of the best investment opportunities. Only those with a high net worth (the amount is set by law) are able to invest in such offerings. This naturally benefits the wealthy to the detriment of wage earners. This system is called capitalism, and it is a bad system—better than socialism or communism, to be sure, but not nearly as good as free enterprise.

In a free enterprise system, the law would allow all people to take part in any investments. The law would be the same for all. If this seems abstract, try starting a business in your local area. In fact, start two. Let the local zoning commissions, city council and other regulating agencies know that you are starting a business, that it will employ you and two employees, and then keep track of what fees you must pay and how many hoops you must jump through. Have your agent announce to the same agencies that a separate company, a big corporation, is bringing in a large enterprise that will employ 4,000 people—all of whom will pay taxes to the local area and bring growth and prestige.

Then simply sit back and watch how the two businesses are treated. In most places in the United States, one will face an amazing amount of red tape, meetings, filings and obstacles—the other will likely be courted and given waivers, benefits and publicity. Add up the cost to government of each, and two things will likely surprise you: 1) how much you will have to spend to set up a small business, and 2) how much the government will be willing to spend to court the large business.

This is the natural model in a capitalist system. Capital gets special benefits. Apparently, in contrast, in Distributist society the small business would pay little and the big business would have to pay a lot more. Under socialism, neither business would be established at all—at least not by you. A government official would do it all, or not do it.

In free enterprise, the costs and obstacles would be identical for the two businesses. In free enterprise, the operative words are “free” and “enterprise.”

Some Distributists seem to share the socialist misconception that unless government forces smallness, every business owner will push to become too big. Wendell Berry, a favorite writer of mine, often took the same tone. In reality, however, the evidence is clear that American business and ownership stayed mostly small—with most people owning family farms or small businesses—until the 1960s. It was government debt which wiped out the farming culture that dominated the South and Midwest, and the rise of big corporations over family-owned businesses came after the U.S. commercial code was changed by law to a capitalist rather than a free-enterprise model.

Give Freedom a Try

Instead of using government to force businesses to remain small, let’s consider giving freedom a try. It has worked for us in the past. If we altered the laws at all levels so that government entities treated all businesses and citizens the same, regardless of their level of capital in the bank, the natural result would be the spread of more small businesses. Freedom, not government control, is the answer.

With all that said, I’m convinced that at least some, maybe many or most, of Distributists in general and the contributing authors to Beyond Capitalism and Socialism specifically would agree with this point, that in fact their view of Distributism coincides with free enterprise. For example, Ahlquist’s chapter appears entirely supportive of free enterprise.

Still, I am concerned by this one thread of thought among some of the authors that seems to see government as the way to keep business from growing. Free enterprise gives no special benefits to big business like capitalism does, but it also does not force businesses to remain small. If this is the view of most Distributists, I agree with them. Even if we disagree on this point (and I’m not certain that we do), I find much to praise in this excellent book.

Quotable Quotes

Beyond this one concern, I can’t say enough positive about Beyond Capitalism and Socialism. It is greatly needed by our citizens today. Everyone should read it and ponder its application to our current world. Consider the following thoughts from this thought-provoking book:

“Home and family are the normal things. Trade and politics are necessary but minor things that have been emphasized out of all proportion.” –Dale Ahlquist

“What then is Distributism? It is that economic system or arrangement in which the ownership of productive private property, as much as possible, is widespread in a nation or society. In other words, in a Distributist society most…would own small farms or workshops…” –Thomas Storck

“As Political Economy is the child of Domestic Economy, all laws that weaken the home weaken the nation.” –Joseph McNabb

“The family, not the individual, is the unit of the nation.” –Joseph McNabb

“We don’t want to work hard. We don’t want to think hard. We want other people to do both our work and our thinking for us. We call in the specialists. And we call this state of utter dependency ‘freedom.’ We think we are free simply because we seem free to move about.” –Dale Ahlquist

“The conservatives and liberals have successfully reduced meaningful debate to name-calling. We use catchwords as a substitute for thinking. We know things only by their labels, and we have ‘not only no comprehension but no curiosity touching their substance or what they are made of.’” –Dale Ahlquist

“The real purpose of traveling is to return. The true destination of every journey is home.” –Dale Ahlquist

“[T]oday here in the United States of America, and in all industrialized countries…there is a class of men and women, perhaps the majority, that…is unfree….I mean, all those who subsist on a wage, the price paid for the commodity they have and who have no other means of maintenance for themselves and their families. I mean…all those who subsist on a wage that is paid to them by those who are, in actuality, their masters; a wage that may be withdrawn at any time and for any reason, leaving them on the dole, or to starve, if they can find no new job…These are not free men in any rational and exact sense of the word.” –Ralph Adams Cram

“Every man should have his own piece of property, a place to build his own home, to raise his family, to do all the important things from birth to death: eating, singing, celebrating, reading, writing, arguing, story-telling, laughing, crying, praying. The home is above all a sanctuary of creativity. Creativity is our most Godlike quality. We not only make things, we make things in our own image. The family is one of those things. But so is the picture on the wall and the rug on the floor. The home is the place of complete freedom, where we may have a picnic on the roof and even drink directly from the milk carton.” –Dale Ahlquist

“The word ‘property’ has to do with what is proper. It also has to do with what is proportional. Balance has to do with harmony. Harmony has to do with beauty….The word ‘economy’ and the word ‘economics’ are based on the Greek word for house, which is oikos. The word ‘economy’ as we know it, however, has drifted completely away from that meaning. Instead of house, it has come to mean everything outside of the house. The home is the place where the important things happen. The economy is the place where the most unimportant things happen.” –Dale Ahlquist

“Caveat lector! For there is little resemblance indeed of the real ownership of real property…to the ‘rent-from-the-bank’ home ‘ownership’ (sic) of most American families.” –John Sharpe

“Our separation of economy from the house is part of a long fragmentation process….Capitalism has separated men from the home. Socialism has separated education from the home….The news and entertainment industry has separated originality and creativity from the home, rendering us into passive and malleable customers rather than active citizens.” –Dale Ahlquist

“In the age of specialization we tend to grasp only small and narrow ideas. We don’t even want to discuss a true Theory of Everything, unless it is invented by a specialist and addresses only that specialist’s ‘everything.’” –Dale Ahlquist

“In material things there can be no individual security without individual property. The independent farmer is secure. He cannot be sacked. He cannot be evicted. He cannot be bullied by landlord or employer. What he produces is his own: the means of production are his own. Similarly the independent craftsman is secure, and the independent shopkeeper.

No agreements, no laws, no mechanism of commerce, trade, or State, can give the security which ownership affords. A nation of peasants and craftsmen whose wealth is in their tools and ski and materials can laugh at employers, money merchants, and politicians. It is a nation free and fearless. The wage-earner, however sound and skilful his work, is at the mercy of the usurers who own that by which he lives.

Moreover, by his very subjection he is shut out from that training and experience which alone can fit him to be a responsible citizen. His servile condition calls for little discretion, caution, judgment, or knowledge of mankind. The so-called ‘failure of democracy’ is but the recognition of the fact that a nation of employees cannot govern itself.” –John Sharpe

Whether you agree or disagree with the details, this book is a treasure of great ideas to consider, discuss, ponder and think about. We need this book today, and we need a society that has read it and deeply contemplated its numerous profound concepts.

Whether or not the ideas in Beyond Capitalism and Socialism become necessary to all of us through some major crisis ahead, a national consideration of these topics is long overdue. We do need to move beyond capitalism and socialism. We need a rebirth of free enterprise, for our nation, economy, freedom, prosperity and above all, for our families and communities.

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Oliver DeMille is a co-founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of Thomas Jefferson Education.

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

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